AFC Turnford's Match Postponed Due to Solar Eclipse

AFC Turnford expected to be under pressure on Wednesday night. They just didn’t expect it to come from the sky.

The non-league club, who groundshare at Wormley Rovers Football Club in Wormley, Hertfordshire, were told their Herts Senior County League Premier Division fixture against Cuffley could not go ahead because of the solar eclipse.

No floodlights. No football.

The match was due to kick off at 19:00 BST, around 40 minutes after the partial eclipse was scheduled to begin at roughly 18:20. With the Sun almost entirely blocked by the Moon for close to an hour and 50 minutes, league officials stepped in.

Ronnie Bates, AFC Turnford’s founder and a player in the side, admitted the ruling caught him off guard.

“I was surprised, but we are just following what has been said,” he explained, after being informed that any club without floodlights had to postpone. “It is what it is; we can't do much about it. We've been told if you don't have floodlights, you have to postpone your game.”

For a club built on mates and weekend graft, it was a new one.

Bates said they had never seen a game called off for anything like this in their six-year history. The team was formed by a group of friends from Haileybury Turnford School in Cheshunt and has been climbing the local ladder since, documenting its journey and highlights on YouTube.

“We are starting to lose light in the evenings, but we normally play at 15:00,” he added, underlining how unusual an evening postponement for lack of light felt — especially when the darkness is caused by the Moon.

Cuffley FC confirmed to the BBC that this was not an isolated call. According to the club, all teams in the Herts Senior County League had been contacted by the HSCL and Hertfordshire FA and instructed to move any Thursday fixtures that could not be played under floodlights because of the eclipse.

The celestial event is set to last from about 18:20 to 20:10, though exact timings depend on location. For AFC Turnford and Cuffley, that window swallowed their midweek football.

A rare night, then, when the non-league calendar had to bow to the cosmos.