Poor air quality postpones Valour FC soccer match

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This article was published 01/06/2019 (2645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The schedule was in Valour FC’s favour heading into Saturday’s scheduled road tilt at Clarke Field against FC Edmonton.

The Winnipeg side was coming off of two weeks with no game action, while Edmonton was gearing up to play their second game of the week as they just played in Hamilton on Wednesday in a 2-0 loss to Forge FC.

But due to an air quality alert in Edmonton because of wildfires in northern Alberta, Saturday’s 5:30 p.m. kickoff has been postponed to 11:30 a.m. on Sunday. The postponement was announced Saturday morning.

“You can smell it in the air,” Valour head coach Rob Gale told the Free Press over the phone. “If you look outside the window, it just looks hazy everywhere.”

The reschedule throws a wrench into Valour’s plans. They’re heading to Halifax next to play the first leg of the second round of the Canadian Championship against the Wanderers on Wednesday.

“It’s unfortunate because they get an extra day rest as they just came back from Forge. And now we get one day less rest going to Halifax as well and the travel there,” Gale said.

“It cancels our idea to have a recovery session tomorrow and training session on Monday. Now, we’re put back a day. Once again, we don’t get the break in the schedule we were hoping for. It turns out what looked like a good schedule has gone back to the ways of the old. It’s a bit of a bummer.”

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Gale said there’s no point to doing anything outside today, but they’ll try to keep busy by using the gym and eating a team dinner together. They’ll also take advantage of their free afternoon to watch the Champions League final between Tottenham and Liverpool.

“We will make the most of it. We’ll turn lemons into lemonade by going to watch the Champions League final. I’m pretty sure this is a ploy by (FC Edmonton coach) Jeff Paulus as a Liverpool fan to get the game delayed so he can watch it with no problem,” joked Gale.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.