The Big Freeze : Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:35 pm  

The season of 1962-63 was a very severe winter with the Dons having all there league games posponed between December 22nd & March 2nd although they did manage to play a cup game at Warrington on February 23rd losing 15-2
All the clubs were desperate to play a game during in this long lay-off & Widnes consulted a local chemical factory who came up with some type of chemical to spread on there snow covered & frost bound pitch it did the trick by melting the snow and it thawed out the pitch and Widnes did manage to play a game on a pitch which was a sea of mud.
Due to the long lay-off many of the clubs were starting to consider what Lance Todd had suggested in the 1930's this being that the sport should turn to being a summer sport.

Re: The Big Freeze : Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:44 pm  

Geoff, always a wealth of knowledge from years gone by and it s great to read some of these posts.

Baz

Re: The Big Freeze : Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:30 pm  

I can well remember going to that first league game in March as I went by train to Keighley and had to change trains at Leeds & Bradford.

In the late 1980's the was another mini freeze and the Dons were desperate to get a home game played. Tattersfield was covered in snow and the pitch was frozen so John Desmond & myself did some research and found there was a product on the market called Octathaw which was used by garden nurserymen to protect there young plants from the frost, after numerous phone calls we managed to find a garden centre that had some bags of Octathaw in stock so John decided to purchase half a dozen bags and try it along the touch line opposite the main stand we spread the granules along an area near the touch line and left them to work over night.
Unfortunately they had little or no effect on the snow & ice but later after the snow had thawed naturally we found it had damaged the grass Keith Hudson wasn't a happy man.