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The FFA released a statement yesterday defending the decision not to reschedule Sunday’s A-League and W-League matches in Adelaide.
The release also refuted Wellington Phoenix coach Chris Greenacre’s tentative claims that some of his players were suffering from heatstroke during the weekend match at Coopers Stadium, staged in near-40-degree heat.
“The FFA Heat Policy clearly states that drinks breaks should be implemented if the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) reaches 26 degrees and there should be consideration of delays and postponement if the WBGT reaches 28. The FFA Heat Policy offers greater consideration to players welfare than the FIFA policy and that of most other sports around the world,” the statement read.
“The WBGT reading before the match on Sunday in Adelaide was 25.6. Despite this, Head of A-League Greg O’Rourke, who was at the match, consulted both Team Doctors and it was agreed to insert drinks breaks into the match as a further sign of FFA’s interest in player welfare. This was all agreed and acknowledged by both teams.”
Firstly, let’s unpack this Wet Bulb Globe Temperature system.
The WBGT reading combines three different methods of measurement that, when combined, hope to offer a rounded assessment on the harshness of the heat conditions, and what effects they stand to have specifically on humans.
The first section (Tw), aiming to simulate the process of evaporative cooling via sweating, uses a thermometer covered by wet cotton wick.
The second (Tg) is a thermometer placed inside a black globe, designed to test the effects of radiation and wind.
The third part (Ta) is a simple, weather-shaded thermometer, the results of which are similar to the sort of temperature readings you’ll hear from your wise-cracking weatherman – or indeed, immaculately dressed weatherwoman.
The three readings are combined using a formula which places the most emphasis on the wet-wick result, and the least on the weather-shaded reading.
WBGT = (0.7 × Tw) + (0.2 × Tg) + (0.1 × Ta)
It is a method used widely, especially in the military and sporting sectors.
Once the results are fed into the formula, the final figure is ranked. Any figure between 25.6-27.7 is ‘white’ category, the lowest bracket. In roughly two-degree increments, the categories increase in intensity – and therefore danger to the subjects – all the way up to category ‘black’, which is any WBGT reading above 32.2 C.
According to the FFA, the pre-match reading was 25.6, placing it, according to their statement, just under – or on the cusp of – the threshold considered extreme enough to postpone or alter the fixture.
While the WBGT method is the most widely used and user-friendly way of getting a preliminary assessment of the severity of the thermal conditions, it is not exempt from criticism, and has been the subject of multiple inquests as to its exactitude.
Questions over the manner in which it assumes accuracy while relying on the non-linear processes of heat and mass transfer, as well as its less-than-stellar inclusion of other factors, like the type of clothing subjects are wearing, into its assessment. A 2012 study determined that fluctuations in readings were common, even when conditions were static, resulting in an unhelpful degree of ambiguity in the final result.
Additionally, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology states that “the effects of the four environmental factors [air temperature, mean radiant temperature, humidity, and air velocity] on the WBGT do not necessarily match those of humans under all conditions.”
Naturally, as the measurement is simply a snapshot of the conditions at the time of reading, it can’t take into account any further increase in heat, or other factors that would affect the health of the athletes.
There can surely be no doubt, however, that even if Greenacre’s claims of heatstroke were hyperbolic, many of the Phoenix players – as well as the Adelaide players, or indeed any of the W-League players who took part in the earlier match, with the sun beating down from higher in the sky – were victims of advanced heat exhaustion.
There were reports of spectators, sitting still with cool drinks in hand, who had to be seen to for heat-related maladies.
The FFA spoke, in its statement, of how the decision to insert drinks breaks was “a further sign of FFA’s interest in player welfare”. The pre-match reading was fractionally below the level where drinks breaks are mandatory; sorry, you get no credit for your above-and-beyond gesture of liquid generosity, guys.
How much the reluctance to reschedule was affected by sycophantism to the A-League broadcaster has been discussed in the days since. Clearly, scheduling – as it is in almost all football leagues worldwide – has been allowed to attach disproportionate weight to the desires of the broadcaster, as opposed to the stadium attendees, or the players and clubs.
Rather than hiding behind the results of a questionable method of heat-danger assessment, perhaps common sense might have prevailed.
It was 40 degrees, for goodness sake!
High-summer fixtures must be more flexible, especially those stages in places prone to extreme heat. Persisting under oppressive conditions is simply inviting a tragic accident.
Australia is a nation almost defined by the image of sport played under the sun. The flick of sweat off a brow, a deep draught on a cool beverage, the shadow of a hunched athlete cast across a heat-shimmered stretch of turf; these beloved tableaux, worth protecting.
But not at the potential cost of an athlete’s welfare.