Here is a live link https://t.co/EocXbKuiae?amp=1 Started at 7:30 CST. How is the NCAA allowing this game to be played. It’s the quarterfinals and this is worse than a grade school pitch. Players sliding. Ball stopping. Ball not bouncing. Certainly there was a turf high school field in Seattle.
Serious question The PAC-12 is a major conference 30,000+ undergraduates $3.5 Billion endowment How do you have a field worse than many elementary schools? Most high schools have a better pitch.
But back to refereeing. If the ball stops moving and players are falling, how is this game permitted?
Its been very wet in the Salish Sea region this fall (see the Vancouver floods). I'm assuming that's the root of the problem.
It’s disappointing. Thankfully no one was hurt. But the first goal was totally caused by field conditions. The second was nice.
It's so frustrating that the laws are modified to include an invisible portion of law 5 which reads (if you could see it) "unless someone who controls your future says differently." While I don't want anyone injured, I hope that if one of these "You're playing" jerks get the hell sued out of them one day.
True, but I think there is a huge difference between risking the safety of professionals and that of college kids.
Fair point. And to the referee's credit, almost all of that water fell between the national anthem and kickoff (about 3 inches in 6 minutes), so there wasn't an opportunity to reassess conditions before play began.
Yeah, welcome to early December in the PNW, where many of our grass fields are generally unusable - and we've just completed the rainiest fall on record (and it's been raining for 24+ hours). I've reffed on this field in some challenging conditions. There are turf fields, of course. UW has three others (at least?), one of which even has some bleachers, but nothing like their main field. The other fields don't have broadcast capabilities, though, and there are no HS/other fields within 45min of the UW campus that has anything like the UW field has. (All our HS fields in greater Seattle, except one, are turf fields.) Memorial Stadium, where OL Reign played until a few years ago when they moved out of the city, has (had?) the broadcast capabilities, and also one of the worst-quality fields in the region. They could have borrowed from Seattle U... but that's a tough sell. Could have moved to Starfire, where S2 played before they became the Tacoma Defiance, but I bet it was booked with something.... Point being, not a lot of choices. (Oh, and some of our turf fields drain very well! Many, however, do not. I am on one of the latter tomorrow, when it will be 35F...) (Edited to add: UW did have a game ended early due to pitch conditions/rain in late October.)
My personal opinion is that it’s hard to say such a field is unsafe- it actually seems harder to get injured when it’s very muddy:wet. is it a farce of soccer? Sure. Is it a fair test of who is the better team? No. Unsafe? No.
I tend to agree with this. It seems like there are a number of studies on various injuries (mostly looking at the turf vs. grass distinction) pointing in different directions. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing one study years ago where muddy fields were actually less likely to cause ACL tears (because you're not getting enough traction). But the worst field-related injury I've had was on a very, very muddy pitch where I went up to jump, but the mud sucked me down and kept me from going anywhere. I didn't really feel the pain during the game, but when I got home I could barely walk up the stairs. As a ref I think it's pretty unlikely that I would stop a game for safety solely due to the pitch conditions, unless there were other issues involved (hard slippery surfaces just off the field, obstructions near the field that players could slide into, etc.).
I don't see how the keeper kicking the ball directly into an opponent is related to field conditions.
OK, but I disagree entirely. The kick never happens if the ball was going to make it to the keeper. It wasn't so he rushed a kick with his plant foot on mud. The SLU defender should have never played the ball back in those conditions. But he should never have been put under those conditions in an elite 8 match.