Step outside on any given morning in 2026 and the evidence is immediate. Pitches sit waterlogged, touchlines have vanished, and weekends once reserved for sport are quietly being crossed off the calendar. For those involved in grassroots sport, climate change is no longer an abstract debate played out in parliamentary chambers, campaign trails, or late-night television panels. It is present, persistent, and disruptive. You do not need a policy briefing to see it. You just need a pair of boots and somewhere to put them.

Much of the political discourse, both here and over the pond, continues to frame climate change as a simple upward shift in global temperatures. The argument is familiar, well-rehearsed, and increasingly detached from lived reality. While rising heat and melting ice caps remain critical indicators, they form only one part of a much larger system under strain. Climate change is defined less by uniform warming and more by instability. Global warming is an effect of climate change, but its most immediate consequence is the rise in extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. If any politicians happen to be reading, this is the bit worth lingering on.

For communities across Hampshire and West Sussex, that instability has become impossible to ignore. Since the turn of the year, rainfall has been relentless, blurring the line between forecast and routine. There has scarcely been a dry day in 2026, with the Met Office confirming January as among the wettest on record across wide swathes of the country. Today marked the forty-fourth consecutive day of rain, a statistic remarkable only for how thoroughly it has reshaped the sporting calendar. And, in a familiar irony, the prospect of summer water restrictions already lingers in the background.

British culture has long been defined by a quiet stoicism. Rain, cold, and general discomfort are treated less as disruptions and more as features of daily life, absorbed into a national instinct to simply get on with it. That mentality still exists, but the structures surrounding modern rugby leave far less room for improvisation. What might once have been shrugged off as a muddy inconvenience is now a regulatory barrier, and at grassroots level the consequences are becoming increasingly severe. Over recent months, Petersfield RFC has been forced to cancel seven weekends of rugby due to waterlogged pitches. Senior sides have seen their training programmes repeatedly displaced, with sessions moved away from the club. Support from Churcher’s College and Midhurst Rother College has been invaluable, but relocation is a workaround, not a solution.

Inevitably, this situation prompts a familiar line of thinking, particularly from those who played the game in a different era. Many will recall a time when standing water was simply part of the challenge, when matches went ahead regardless and mud was worn as a badge of commitment. There is a certain charm to that memory, and perhaps a degree of selective nostalgia. But rugby now operates within a far more complex framework of duty of care, insurance, safeguarding, and long-term player welfare. The appetite to persevere remains, but the margins for doing so responsibly have narrowed considerably.

The more pressing issue lies in what persistent cancellations do to clubs beyond the pitch. Financially, the impact is immediate and unforgiving. Each weekend, clubhouses transform into community spaces, welcoming families for post-match teas, youth gatherings, or the well-worn ritual of Saturday lunches before a First XV fixture. This hospitality is not supplementary income. It is the financial backbone of clubs like Petersfield. When weekends are lost, that revenue disappears entirely. Stock goes unused, staffing costs remain, and clubs are left financially exposed.

The human cost is less visible but equally damaging. The pandemic demonstrated how quickly engagement in physical activity erodes when routine is removed. Consistent cancellation fractures habits. Players begin to look elsewhere for their exercise, motivation fades, and attendance drops. At Petersfield, the senior men’s section has already felt this effect. With no games to prepare for and no certainty of continuity, the logic becomes disarmingly simple. No fixtures to play means less reason to turn up.

Behind these cancellations sits a reality that is often invisible from the touchline. Since 1 December 2025, the club has recorded 557 millimetres of rainfall up to the morning of 13 February 2026. That figure represents almost 50 per cent of the total rainfall recorded across the entirety of 2025, compressed into just over ten weeks. While the club benefits from relatively free-draining soils to a depth of around a metre, those conditions only hold under specific circumstances. Daily rainfall on this scale overwhelms even well-constructed natural surfaces.

Compounding the issue is a problem few clubs would complain about in isolation. Success. Two of the club’s three floodlit pitches are used for approximately 800 minutes each week, with the primary league and cup pitch carrying up to a further 300 minutes. Under normal conditions, that level of usage is manageable. This winter, it has not been. Ground conditions have deteriorated to the point where maintenance equipment cannot be used without causing further damage. Preservation has replaced preparation.

Cancellations and relocations have not been acts of caution, but necessity. Decisions have been made not only to keep pace with a disrupted schedule, but to preserve what little pitch integrity remains ahead of the off-season. Without the provision of artificial grass pitches, the only viable alternative is extensive drainage. Quotations for drainage installation across three pitch equivalents range from £114,882 for drains at five-metre centres to £193,132 at two-and-a-half-metre centres. Figures that sit well beyond the reach of self-funding for most grassroots clubs, particularly when weighed against other unavoidable operational costs.

Rugby at grassroots level survives on engagement above all else. While the weather may be the most obvious culprit behind lost game time, it is not the most dangerous. The greater risk lies in allowing disruption to become normal. When cancelled weekends stop feeling temporary and start feeling expected, the damage is already underway.

If grassroots rugby is to survive, let alone thrive, it requires deliberate investment designed to future-proof the game. Without it, the erosion currently taking place will only accelerate. The professional game is largely insulated from these pressures. Broadcast revenues, commercial partnerships, elite playing surfaces, and advanced drainage systems allow it to absorb disruption with relative ease. Fixtures may be rescheduled, but the structure remains intact. At that level, poor weather is an inconvenience rather than a threat.

Grassroots rugby does not enjoy the same protection. Its pitches are exposed, its finances fragile, and its reliance on consistency absolute. The old adage still holds true. When the grassroots game sneezes, the international game eventually catches a cold. The pathway from junior rugby to the elite level is neither accidental nor self-sustaining. It is built on participation, habit, and access. Remove those foundations and the consequences may not be immediate, but they are inevitable.

If extreme weather events are set to become more frequent, as evidence increasingly suggests, then a fundamental question must be asked of those at the top of the sport. How does rugby plan to mitigate this impact at community level. Investment in resilient infrastructure is no longer a luxury or a reward for success. It is a necessity for survival.

The situation in Hampshire illustrates the issue clearly. Across the entire county, there are just two purpose-built rugby artificial pitches. One sits at Havant RFC, and the other at HMS Temeraire. While several multi-use 3G surfaces exist where rugby posts can be added temporarily, in practical terms there are only two rugby-specific artificial pitches available to serve dozens of clubs.

Havant’s selection as the recipient of such a facility made complete sense. As the highest-placed club in Hampshire across the men’s and women’s game, and with one of the county’s largest and most successful youth, girls, and minis sections, their pitch was delivered as part of the RFU’s Rugby 365 World Cup legacy programme. At the time, it was rightly held up as a blueprint for what a modern, resilient community club could look like.

It is also why so many clubs across Hampshire quietly envy Havant’s facility. Not out of jealousy, but out of necessity. An artificial pitch offers certainty in an increasingly uncertain climate. It allows training to continue through prolonged rainfall, fixtures to be fulfilled rather than postponed, and youth sections to operate with consistency. It protects revenue by keeping clubhouses open, preserves player engagement by maintaining routine, and reduces the administrative and emotional toll that comes with constant disruption. In short, it offers stability, something natural grass pitches can no longer guarantee with any reliability.

The second pitch, at HMS Temeraire, tells a different story. Funded through naval investment, it exists primarily to serve service personnel rather than the wider rugby community. Its presence, while welcome, is not the result of rugby-led grassroots strategy. In effect, only one rugby-specific artificial pitch in Hampshire has been delivered through direct investment from the sport’s governing structures.

A decade on, not a single additional rugby-specific artificial pitch has been built at a Hampshire club. This absence is not due to a lack of ambition or demand at grassroots level. It reflects the absence of a clear, long-term infrastructure plan. While individual clubs may naturally argue their own case, the reality is that many could make an equally compelling one. The same pressures are being felt nationwide.

There is a growing sentiment that those at the very top of the sport are increasingly preoccupied with sustaining a fragile professional landscape, rather than reinforcing the grassroots foundations beneath it. Situations like this give weight to that belief. Because without meaningful intervention, extreme weather will not simply cancel fixtures. It will thin squads, weaken communities, reduce participation, and quietly erode the ecosystem upon which the professional and international game ultimately relies.

The responsibility now sits squarely with the sport’s governing bodies. If grassroots rugby is truly regarded as the foundation of the game, then it must be treated as such, not spoken about as an afterthought while resources continue to flow upwards. Investment at the community level is not charity, nor is it a threat to the professional game. It is the means by which that game survives. Future-proofing rugby will not be achieved by protecting what exists at the top alone, but by reinforcing what sustains everything beneath it. Ignore that reality, and the consequences will not be confined to muddy pitches and cancelled fixtures. They will shape the future of the sport itself.