Bardon Latrobe Football Club

We’re asking our wonderful supporters to chip in $5 to help our U12s get to Georges River

https://gofund.me/3e90d391c

Our sausage sizzle is a major part of our fundraising effort but with the fields closed we’ve missed a couple of weekends!

So take part in our virtual sausage sizzle…. no calories, just that warm fuzzy feeling you get for donating to a good cause

(To be clear, you don’t receive a sausage for your donation, virtual or otherwise! 😂)

what’s the opposite of a “rain dance”, because we need to do that

sad times. We’ll update via the website, but experience tells us this is going to take a lot of sunshine and wind today and tomorrow to recover for the weekend. we hit 45% yesterday before the big rain.

If you're visiting Bardon this weekend we plan to have all our games go ahead.

But like every Brisbane club, our fields are still very wet so we ask that everyone follows two extra rules.

1) There are no spectators in the zones below. This is mostly a Saturday thing. There are alternative sides for parents to watch from.
2) There is to be no warming up on the pitch, and especially no shooting at goals in game day positions.

These small changes allow us to put the games on.

thanks in advance for respecting our fields this weekend. We hope you all have a great game and enjoy our fundraining sausage sizzle after😉

https://www.raffletix.com.au/?ref=6b8nk

Support our Under 12 soccer teams as they prepare for their annual interstate trip to Sydney. We are running a weekly Prize Hamper and XGolf Enoggera Raffle and other prizes each week featuring prizes donated by local businesses. Every ticket purchased helps cover travel, accommodation and our team kit. Win great prizes, and help our teams represent our club and community with pride!

We have some sunshine, but Bowman Park is closed today. There will be no play on the pitch today, tomorrow is highly unlikely too.

Experience has taught us that the first day of sunshine is when people are most likely to damage the surface. The sun is out, so people want to play, we get it, but the surface is soft, and any play will rip up the grass.

Every team is facing same scenario, and not just Bardon, clubs across SE QLD are all closed for play.

As always the website is the official record for the ground opening. We share here because we know players, coaches, and visiting clubs will look.

This National Volunteer Week, we want to celebrate the incredible volunteer coaches who make football possible at Bardon Latrobe FC.

Every training session, early Saturday morning, team talk, orange slice and encouraging word happens because parents and volunteers step up for our kids and our community.

Our coaches are teachers, mentors, organisers, cheer squads and role models. They help create the fun, safe and welcoming environment that makes BLFC such a special club.

This week, we’d love our teams and families to help us say thank you.

👇 Drop a comment or photo of your coach in the comments and give them a shout out. Tell us:
* what makes them special
* a favourite moment from the season so far
* or simply say thanks

Many of our coaches started exactly where so many parents are now, standing on the sideline and putting their hand up to help. That volunteer spirit is what keeps our community club thriving.

Thank you to every volunteer coach across BLFC. You are the heart of our club.

We know it can be hard to understand why Bowman Park is still closed today when the sun is out and there’s no rain around.

The issue now is not the weather above the surface. It’s the softness underneath the turf.

After days of sustained rain, the ground below the grass becomes saturated and unstable. Even when the surface starts to dry out, the soil underneath can still be very soft. When players run and turn on soft ground, the turf can rip apart very quickly.

At this time of year, grass growth also slows down significantly. You’ve probably noticed the same thing at home with your lawns. A few months ago you may have been mowing every weekend. Now it’s more like every two or three weeks. That slower growth means the fields cannot recover from damage the way they can during summer.

We already saw signs of this on Wednesday night during the Metro 5 game. There was noticeable turf damage from that match alone, and that was before the significant rain that followed. Absolutely no fault of the Metro 5 lads, it simply showed how soft the base underneath the fields had become.

The conditions over the past few days have created a compound effect. Sustained rain, mild sunshine, high humidity and low wind all slow down the drying process. Even light showers keep the surface soft because the moisture underneath has nowhere to go quickly.

Current moisture readings across Bowman Park range from 32% to 50%, with most areas sitting around 35%. If games had gone ahead today, the fields would likely have been ripped up badly, which could affect availability and playing conditions for weeks.

Many of our teams playing away this weekend will have seen other clubs forced to make the same difficult decision. Grounds across Brisbane are dealing with very similar conditions right now.

We know cancellations are frustrating, especially for kids excited to play football, but protecting the fields now helps ensure we can keep providing safe and quality playing surfaces for the whole BLFC community across the season.

Thanks for your understanding and support of our volunteer grounds team who work incredibly hard behind the scenes to look after Bowman Park.