'There's a fish on the court!' Pictures lay bare flood disasters at Shropshire sports clubs counting huge costs

Football pitches, tennis courts and bowling greens have been left sodden by "biblical" rain and, in some cases, left filthy with sewage.

Clubs in the region are now lending their voices to a national campaign to draw attention to the impact of extreme weather on sport.

The Save Our Grassroots campaign, with supporters including Match of the Day host Gary Lineker, Arsenal legend and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Paul Merson, rower Helen Glover and naturalist Steve Backshall, has been staging football matches in wellies and encouraged people to write to their MPs to highlight the plight of grassroots sport and public green spaces.

Shrewsbury Lawn Tennis Club, on the edge of the Severn just along from The Quarry, has flooded three times over the past two years.

"We watched the grass courts turn into a lake in a couple of hours," said long-time club member and volunteer Karen Pearce after floods on September 8. "It was so deep a heron flew in looking for a quick dinner.

"The £2,500 cost of calling in specialist cleaners to remove heavy silt and restore drainage after Storm Henk last January is now built into the annual budget and affects membership costs.

"We’re an inclusive, not-for-profit, community club," she added. "Our ethos is to keep membership costs as low as possible and offer opportunities for everyone."

Karen, who has a background in environmental science, has seen flooding become both more frequent and more severe, with water tending to stay on the ground longer after a flood incident, sometimes for up to a fortnight.

"I can’t say how pleased I am about the Save Our Grassroots campaign," she said. "To see someone like Paul Merson launching it in his wellies is fantastic. It highlights what the impacts will be on our everyday lives and things that we love."

Nearby Old Shrewsbury Bowling Club, also right next to the river, used to flood around once every five years. But since 2016, it has flooded twice a year on average, with devastating results as the flood waters bring overflow from the sewerage system.

“We get 12 foot of water against the clubhouse building,” said club chairman Terry Evans. “All the sewage [overflow] from Town Walls goes straight under our car park."

Although Severn Trent now comes to pump dry the clubhouse very quickly, it takes volunteers about ten days to clear up the mess left behind by the filthy water.

“We do it in masks, it’s very depressing,” Terry said. “We can’t get insurance – specialised insurance companies tell us it would cost £25,000 a year.

“We have £20,000 worth of mowers in the clubhouse. We can’t store too much in there as it has to be moved."

Looking to the future of the 116-year-old club, Terry said: “We just want help with moving forward and growing the club if possible. We want to bring disabled bowlers and youngsters into the sport. We have some amazing volunteers – we couldn’t survive without them."

Repair costs for AFC Telford United after flash flooding on September 26, which left the pitch, car park, gym and offices underwater, have been estimated up to 20,000. The club's foundation director Ian Preece, who was heading back from a community football session when the rain started said: “It was unreal. It felt like one of those disaster movies."

The extreme weather left the ground unusable for two matches the stadium was due to host, leaving management worried about the lost income.

Tim Evans, regional chief officer for the West Midlands branch of the Joint Civil Aid Corps, who co-ordinated recovery efforts at Telford’s stadium, expects to see more acute, localised flooding because of the intensity of rainfall in small areas.

His colleague Darren Besford, JCAC station commander in Coventry, agreed, saying: “Flash flooding will be a normal thing – like tornadoes are in America. We will have flood months, the flood season."

“There is a problem in this area,” said AFC Telford United director Steve Pryce, referring to an earlier flooding incident in 2022. “They ignored it last time. They’ve got to do something about it this time. Because it isn’t going to get any better."

Research by the Rapid Transition Alliance found one in four English Football League grounds could expect partial or total annual flooding by 2050. Separate figures from the British Association for Sustainable Sport show extreme weather has stopped 130,000 cricket overs in the past decade and that 120,000 football games are now lost every season.

More than 10,000 people were evacuated from their homes as a result of Storm Babet.

During Flood Action Week, the Environment Agency is setting out steps people can take to protect their homes and property from flood risk. According to the agency, 5.5 million properties in England are at risk from flooding.