Beating squeeze of Great Freeze

THERE was a time when it was extreme weather that used to disrupt our winter playing schedules, now it is Covid with the ongoing debate about the distribution of points for cancelled games.

Which, in a roundabout way, got me wondering how rugby coped during the Great Freeze of 1963. Snow drifts as high as your house, the telephone wires opposite crashing to ground from the sheer weight of accumulated snow and the sea frozen over down on the south coast.

Between December 23, 1962 and March 6, 1963 Britain was an arctic wasteland. There was just one National Hunt meeting in all of Britain, at Ayr on January 5, while some FA Cup ties were rescheduled ten or more times. The Pools Panel had to be invented.

Remarkably however the Five Nations was concluded on time on March 23 with England just missing out on a Grand Slam. Hundreds of tons of straw covering, coal braziers or fire pits and volunteer armies on match day morning clearing the straw or snow. By hook of by crook all matches were completed.

All of which prompted another thought. Whatever happened to the inflatable domes – massive heated tents essentially – which they used to truck around the country in midweek and erect to preserve Premiership games?

No sooner had the thought occurred than, hey presto, one re-appeared to save Bath’s game against Wasps on Friday. It’s not a proper winter until we see the dome in its fully inflated glory.