WHILE sub-zero weather conditions wreak havoc among fixtures from the elite level down to grassroots, players, officials and supporters are being praised for their patience by the Essex County FA.

They were forced to call a halt to the majority of their own county cup ties at the weekend due to some of the worst snowy weather since the big freeze of 1963.

All fixtures scheduled for the Saturday and Sunday Premier Cups, the Sunday Veterans’ Cup and the under-16s and 14s girls’ cups were postponed as pitches suffered from ice cold temperatures and thick blankets of snow.

But reassurance is being offered in comparison to the three-month downfall of the early 60s, with this year’s burst at its strongest only likely to constitute a fraction of those harsh severities.

While utterances of “If Man City vs Man United doesn’t even survive the weather, what chance have we got?” reverberate around local parks and clubs this week, and in the days before undersoil heating became the norm in the top tier, things were very different.

Even the Chelseas of this world couldn’t cope with such extremes as frozen fog, -16 degrees climates and even the freezing over of a mile’s stretch of sea off Herne Bay in Kent!

Sheer numbers involved in football at the time weren’t as plentiful as in the present day, with 913 clubs and 36 leagues affiliated in Essex as opposed to 1,598 and 50 now.

But www.bbc.co.uk reflected: “The FA Cup draw became a farce... ‘the winners of A or B will play the winners of C or D’ etc. etc.

“Chelsea got so fed up they flew off to Malta to play a friendly and ended up staying for a week.

“The weather didn’t do them any favours. They’d been on a roll up to the big freeze then once the season got going again they went on a loosing streak.

“Mind you they did get promoted to the old First Division (now the Premier League) in the end, but it all hung on the final match.”

Leafing through the handbook archive, the Association’s president at the time, Sir Stuart Mallison, was only too aware of the climate’s effects.

In his message the following year, he wrote: “1962/63 will long be remembered for the worst weather in the history of our football story.

“The weather was no respecter of clubs, of local, county, Football League or Cup teams, all were in the same icy grip and the weather was the common denominator, but with patience and good humour the clubs adapted themselves.

“We must hope that 1963/4 will enable all to fulfil their programmes up to time.”

Meanwhile, in the Essex County Schools FA’s report for 1962/63, LF Birmingham described the pressures of the fixture list.

“Up to Christmas the season pursued its normal course but an unprecedented spell of bad weather, frost, ice, and snow, and its lasting effect on grounds led to little or no football being possible in January, February and early March,” Mr Birmingham’s report stated.

“As a result the later stages of our competitions had to be played in the eight-week period between mid-March and mid-May.

“It is to the credit of all the Associations concerned that by their efforts all the competitions were finished by mid-May.”

So if you’re looking out of your window wondering when your next fix of football is likely to arrive, in retrospect we have a lot to be grateful for that this wintry weather is unlikely to last as long as the 1963 burst!

Current Essex County FA chief executive, Phil Sammons, said: “Naturally it’s frustrating to see football brought to a near standstill and we’re grateful for the hours volunteer administrators have to put in during these challenging times.”