Junior/Youth A bizarre incident

[Matthew]

It's rare these days that I come away from a game saying "I've never seen that before", but yesterday was different.

Really one sided U14 game and towards the end of the first half, the away side hit the crossbar for the umpteenth time. This time however, the goalposts just collapsed; the crossbar dropped and the left hand post fell backwards! Stopped the game instantly and thankfully, after a 15 minute delay, the posts were fixed and secure.

Initially, we couldn't secure the posts, so it looked like I was going to have to abandon, but one of the parents came to the rescue with a roll of duct tape and some glue (not pretty, but it worked!).

One small question. Who would have been at fault had somebody been hurt? My legal brain says the home side, particularly because I'd done all my usual pre-match checks and there was no sign that there was anything wrong.

 

[RegalRef]

It's rare these days that I come away from a game saying "I've never seen that before", but yesterday was different.

Really one sided U14 game and towards the end of the first half, the away side hit the crossbar for the umpteenth time. This time however, the goalposts just collapsed; the crossbar dropped and the left hand post fell backwards! Stopped the game instantly and thankfully, after a 15 minute delay, the posts were fixed and secure.

Initially, we couldn't secure the posts, so it looked like I was going to have to abandon, but one of the parents came to the rescue with a roll of duct tape and some glue (not pretty, but it worked!).

One small question. Who would have been at fault had somebody been hurt? My legal brain says the home side, particularly because I'd done all my usual pre-match checks and there was no sign that there was anything wrong.

If you did your pre match and confirm all was well it won't be the home team.

As you are in a neutral position of authority and have checked and confirmed all is well prior to commencement of the game, it would need to be proven that the equipment was faulty before the start of the game, which would be incredibly difficult to do.

While it would be easy to prove why it failed, it wouldn't be easy to prove that defect was clearly visible at the point of your inspection.

If you did your pre-match inspection correctly, and the equipment had taken a bombardment of hits after that, before eventually failing, it would probably go down as either act of God or occupational hazard.

 

[jofusref]

was it one of these goals that are supposed to be dismantaled, or was it a proper goal

 

[Matthew]

was it one of these goals that are supposed to be dismantaled, or was it a proper goal

It was a football and rugby pitch, with the additional posts for rugby stored behind a barrier, so I assume it is designed to be dismantled. My guess is that it just worked itself loose when being hit.