Heavy flooding disrupts Chapel Gate sport

Chapel Gate have had to call off all sports taking place on their grass facilities on Wednesday, due to Storm Chandra causing flooding across the grounds.

Chapel Gate worker Ewan Corbett says, “Obviously people aren’t happy, they’ve paid money, at the end of the day, to play football and they can’t play, couldn’t play last week either. We’ve got a lot of games to play.

“Then as for Chapel Gate itself, the bar gets no use today, not going to be able to sell today, lose-lose for everyone.

“There’s less need for staff if there isn’t going to be people there so shifts get cancelled and people lose out on making a bit of money for the day.”

Corbett revealed that games that did go ahead were also affected.

“All the games played were on the astroturf, which meant that half the games can’t even be played and are cancelled and are going to have to be played at a later date,

“People got there 9:30am and their games had to kick off at 10:30am because people couldn’t get there because of the flooding.

“The car park today, half of it was covered in water.”

Wednesday is Chapel Gate’s busiest day, with university BUCS sports taking place there, along with campus league football fixtures.

This draws a lot of teams to the grounds to play sport as well as a lot of spectators. All of which bring lots of business to the Chapel Gate clubhouse.

Getting to Chapel Gate is still due to be a tough task today as New Road bridge is still flooded through, as well as a few surrounding roads.

It is still unclear as to when Chapel Gate will be accessible again for not just students but also competitive teams and university socials.

According to the Met Office, we’re due to expect some more rain in Bournemouth through Thursday evening and throughout Friday and Saturday.

It is also currently stated that next week will see dryer weather in Bournemouth next week, hopefully this results in Chapel Gate being able to proceed with business as usual and get a lot of punters as well as sports and campus league teams.