KEY POINTS:
In a season that has been described as the worst in over a decade teams around the county are preparing for the inevitable cancellation of another weekend's sport.
Sodden sports grounds have become a hallmark of this winter, with snow, torrential rain and high winds preventing thousands of teams from getting on to the field for weeks on end.
Auckland Football Federation chief executive David Parker said the season had been the worst in over a decade, with some players missing up to seven weeks in a row.
"In the four weeks of July and the first week of August we scheduled about 2800 league games from age 10 upwards. We played 217 - that's the extent of problem."
Mr Parker said the situation was compounded in cities like Auckland and Wellington where there were a lack of grounds to start with.
"The scarcity of grounds means that each individual pitch gets a lot of use each weekend, so even when the grounds are not totally closed, restrictions on use mean that we can't play our full programme."
Pressure to get players on to the pitches also meant games were being played on sub-standard grounds, Mr Parker said.
" We're playing in what, in an average winter, might be regarded as marginal conditions to get people a game, and therefore that is making a mess of some of the fields.
"Another situation is that they've not been able to get on the grounds to mow, which means it's holding moisture and not drying as fast as it would do."
Keith Palmer, general manager for Capital Football, the federation responsible for soccer in Wellington, Kapiti, Horowhenua and Wairarapa, reported the same situation.
"Wellington does feel it pretty hard. We're under tremendous grounds pressure, particularly in Wellington City region and even in a good year, so we've been particularly hard hit," Mr Palmer said.
"We've had weekends where we've had just six single pitches for one game each available across the entire region."
Many leagues would miss out on completing their competition rounds because so few games had been played. Junior leagues were particularly hard hit, with an expectation that none of the 630 junior teams playing in the Greater Wellington region would complete their season.
Mr Palmer said the situation was frustrating, and meant that, like Auckland, sometimes grounds were being played on in less than ideal conditions.
"We're damned if we do, damned if we don't - at times we've pushed the boundaries of that more than we would normally just to try and get some football played. "
The southern end of the country has not been spared the extreme weather, with Southern Soccer general manager Wilson James marking it as the worst season ever.
"It is quite possibly the worst for us in living memory," he said.
Mr James said the region usually had fairly mild winters so this year's harsh winter had come as a shock.
The consensus between the federations was to fix the problem by installing artificial pitches which would make the game less weather-dependent.
"Obviously they have drainage built into them when they are constructed and you can play numerous games on them," Mr James said.
However, while councils agreed artificial pitches were the best solution, they created a problem of cost.
Wellington City Council sports field manager Trevor Jackson said the council was constantly looking into how drainage could be improved at parks, particularly in a year of excessive rain like this.
"One artificial pitch is going in this summer and there are papers going before council about the best places to put more in later this year," Mr Jackson said.
"The cost for one full length soccer or rugby pitch is $1.5 million, so cost is a huge issue."
- NZPA
