Article: published on 1 June 2024

A groundsman with decades of experience has said he fears that climate change could be affecting football.

Ian Darler, a groundsman at League One club Cambridge United for 45 years, says the weather he has seen in the past 12 months is "exceptional" and "scary".

Mr Darler said heavy rain in recent months had made it difficult for him to get training pitches ready for next season.

He said he had "never been so stressed".

Mr Darler, 65, has spoken of his concerns about the weather in interviews with the BBC.

He had not thought about the effects climate change might be having on his job until about 18 months ago.

But he said the weather he witnessed in the last two seasons made the issue "a lot more meaningful".

"It's a scary situation," he told BBC Online.

He joked that farmers and ground staff were always complaining about the weather.

"The one thing about farmers and groundsmen is you are never happy," Mr Darler told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

"It's either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry.

"But what we have experienced in the last 12 months is just exceptional.

"I have been at the stadium for 45 years. I have never been so stressed in my life."

In February, Bolton's evening game at Cambridge was abandoned after nine minutes of play due to a waterlogged pitch.

"At 5:30 the pitch was bone dry," said Mr Darler.

"Six pm to 6:30 it started raining, 7:30 you could only describe it as tropical rainfall."

Mr Darler said staff had recently renovated the pitch at Cambridge's Abbey Stadium.

"On the day after we seeded we had what you would describe as a monsoon," he said.

"The seed all washed out."

He said he was left with a pitch where grass was too thick in some parts and too sparse in others.

Mr Darler said he was renovating two of Cambridge's four training pitches in readiness for the new season but heavy rain had left him "weeks behind".

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