“Game off” has been heard far too often around Dens Park this season.
Once in a while can be classed as unfortunate but four matches called off in one season because of a waterlogged pitch is a serious problem.
Home games against Rangers, Aberdeen, St Johnstone and Ross County have now all fallen foul of the weather.
For a club with aspirations to take its place among the top six clubs in the country, that’s embarrassing.
And a lot of money down the drain.
Rangers were right to state that the situation “reflects poorly on our game” with the game supposed to be shown live on Sky Sports.
It’s not often I agree with the Ibrox club either.
It also reflects poorly on a club very much heading in the right direction overall and detracts from the good work done by manager Tony Docherty and his players this season.
Only once this term have they been shown live on Sky Sports this term – that’s a lot of good football played by Dundee not seen by the wider footballing public.
Again an opportunity has been missed over the weekend.
Sky will think again about putting on a live game at Dens Park. Again that’s to Dundee’s detriment.
Nothing new
It’s not just this season, though, that the pitch has been an issue.
Throughout the Championship-winning campaign, the Dens Park surface was in a sorry state.
Work was done over the summer to alleviate those problems but issues remain.
And we’re at a stage now where the pitch just can’t handle what is a normal level of rain for the Scottish winter/early spring.
You can’t have that in the Premiership.
It’s something that needs sorted and sorted properly. The league requires better, the players deserve better, the fans deserve better.
Dens issues
Dens Park is run-down and out-of-date – you can get away with that if there’s a pitch to play football on in the middle.
But this pitch problem is yet another symptom of the neglect of the place over a number of years.
Father-and-son groundsman team, Brian and Brian Robertson – suspended by the club at the turn of the year after the Aberdeen game over an “internal staff matter” – were regularly praised by managers like Paul Hartley and Neil McCann.
Dens Park was a place opposition teams like to come and play because the pitch was good.
Now they can’t come and play.
Why’s that? Because the same level of investment that was previously put into the pitch hasn’t continued.
This situation is a direct result.
There are reasons for that, a pandemic and more. But mainly it’s because of the new stadium.
Why put money into Dens when you are going to move in the near future?
Well, this is why. Because the club ends up looking third-rate while the wait goes on for a green light to start building at Camperdown.
Sadly there’s not much that can be done in the short-term to properly sort the issue while the season is ongoing.
The club will have to grin and bear it and take the criticism on the chin.
‘Above and beyond’
Dundee have aspirations of being a top-six club and possibly even European football once more.
The team is going in the right direction under Docherty, there is plenty going right off the park as well but high-profile incidents like this overshadow all of that.
Fair play to all the staff who rolled the sleeves up, grabbed a pitchfork and did everything they could to get the game on. Huge efforts going above and beyond.
But there’s no way a top-flight professional club should be relying on that to get a pitch ready to face Rangers in the Premiership live on Sky.
If Dundee want to be taken seriously as a top-flight club, they need to start acting seriously on and off the pitch.
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