Eclipse Causes Postponement of AFC Turnford Match
AFC Turnford expected to be worrying about Cuffley’s front line on Wednesday night. Instead, they were told to worry about the Sun.
The non-league club, who groundshare at Wormley Rovers Football Club in Wormley, Hertfordshire, were ordered to postpone their Herts Senior County League Premier Division fixture because of the solar eclipse.
No floodlights. No game.
Founder-player Ronnie Bates explained that the match had been due to kick off at 19:00 BST, around an hour after the partial eclipse was scheduled to begin.
“We’ve been told if you don’t have floodlights, you have to postpone your game,” Bates said. “It is what it is; we can’t do much about it. I was surprised, but we are just following what has been said.”
The decision, taken by the Herts Senior County League, caught the club off guard. The HSCL has been contacted for comment.
For a side used to the usual non-league disruptions – waterlogged pitches, frozen surfaces, players stuck on the motorway – this was something else entirely.
“It’s unusual to see a game called off like that, as we’ve never had it before,” Bates added. “We are starting to lose light in the evenings, but we normally play at 15:00.”
AFC Turnford have been together for six years, born out of a group of friends from Haileybury Turnford School in Cheshunt. They have climbed into the Premier Division and harbour ambitions of going higher, documenting their rise and matchdays on YouTube.
This time, the cameras will stay in their bags.
Cuffley FC confirmed to the BBC that all clubs in the league had been contacted by the HSCL and Hertfordshire FA and instructed to move any fixtures that could not be played under floodlights on Thursday because of the eclipse.
The celestial event, in which the Moon will almost completely block the Sun, is expected to last around one hour and 50 minutes, starting at about 18:20 and ending by 20:10, with timings varying around the globe.
At Wormley, that window neatly swallowed kick-off and full-time.
Non-league football is used to the elements deciding the schedule. Rain, snow, fog. Now the Moon has had its say.
