Wet winter leads to 'extremely frustrating' grassroots football season

Relentless rainfall over recent months has had a major impact on grassroots sports, especially football.

Saturated ground, flooding and waterlogged pitches has led to an "extremely frustrating" season.

Some grassroots and youth football clubs in southern England have been unable to play any fixtures so far in 2026.

It is a similar situation in Wales where 30% of games have been postponed. The Football Association of Wales, recognising the problem, has just begun a pilot project this spring to find a solution.

"Game off" is a familiar text for many over the last few months after pitch inspections deem it unsafe to play football.

Football is particularly sensitive to changes in playing surface condition, with the Football Foundation saying that any surface water makes it unfit for play.

Goudhurst Dynamos Football Club in Kent - a small, grassroots village club – has been particularly badly affected.

Club chairman Phil Kirkby said: "What should be the busiest and most exciting stretch of the grassroots season has instead turned into a string of cancellations."

He described how extended breaks in training and matches can be "detrimental to cardiovascular fitness and match readiness, making it harder for players to perform at their best when games eventually resume".

The Grounds Management Association (GMA) advises that "without adequate traction a pitch is likely to be unsafe and the risk of player injury increases".

Playing on a wet pitch can also damage the grass surface with things like divots, scrapes and scars becoming much more frequent.

And when soil is compacted by players on the pitch, this can further reduce the ability of the surface to drain water, making it less likely to be fit for the next fixture.

In north Wales, for Tom Evison, a coach of the Llangollen youth team, it has been an "extremely frustrating season due to the persistent wet weather", with his team facing a backlog of 12 fixtures to be completed by the end of April.

Despite the perceived never-ending succession of storms this winter, Met Office statistics, external show that for the UK as a whole winter has been just 9% wetter than average. However, there have been huge regional variations.

The West Midlands, Cornwall and Leicestershire all had their wettest winter on record. Katesbridge in County Down saw 46 consecutive wet days starting in early January. Aboyne in Aberdeenshire received four times the expected monthly rainfall during January.

In sharp contrast to the deluges in eastern Scotland, it was an extremely dry winter in the north and west of Scotland, with some places seeing 31% less rainfall than expected.

These big variations in rainfall have been largely caused by a "blocked" weather pattern which left our weather stuck in a rut for most of January and February.

The jet stream sent areas of low pressure spinning in from the Atlantic, but their progress was stopped by an area of high pressure that became slow-moving across Scandinavia.

The English and Scottish Football Associations do not officially report the number of grassroots games that are postponed due to the weather.

The Football Association of Wales (FAW) say that during the 2024/25 season, more than 5,800 matches were postponed because of weather.

It set up Project Chwarae, led by Marc Roberts who told the BBC they "want to look at the season differently to reduce weather-related postponements and ultimately improve the experience for players."

Two pilots start this year with the first being what he described a "radical switch."

This will see the season for the under-six to under-11 age groups run from March to November (with an August break).

With generally finer weather through spring and summer this should mean there would be limited, if any, postponements due to waterlogged pitches.

After a break in matches over the winter, next season will start again in March 2027.

The second takes a more flexible approach where it is up to individual leagues when they start in August, but with a six-week break over winter, and then letting the season run until June or July.

As our world continues to warm, extreme rainfall is becoming more frequent and intense.

For every 1C rise in air temperature, the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture so that when it rains, it now rains more.

This is especially the case during the winter half of the year with Met Office predictions showing a trend towards wetter winters and drier summers.

While more rainfall may lead to muddier pitches, there are other factors to note such as drainage, local hydrology and ground maintenance strategies.

Investment in pitch maintenance and building more all-weather artificial pitches is one solution but costs money so shifting the grassroots season into the summer months could be a more economical alternative.

Many parts of the UK have enjoyed some drier, brighter and warmer weather during the first week of spring.

Temperatures have been up in the mid- to high teens and the spring sunshine has some noticeable warmth to it.

For the first weekend of spring there will be some welcome dry weather for most of the UK.

It will be quite cloudy however across England and Wales with the best of any sunshine across Scotland and Northern Ireland, before turning a little brighter on Sunday afternoon.

The outlook for rest of March is looking more promising as will be some lengthy dry spells to help pitches recover.

You can stay up to date with our latest monthly forecast here.