Cancelled Match Result in Lawsuit
A class-action lawsuit has been filed over the abrupt, last-minute cancellation of last Sunday’s U.S. Women’s Nation Team’s soccer game. The reason the game was cancelled? It was simple – poor quality field conditions and player safety.
As Alex Morgan said in her Letter To Fans in the Players Tribune, “This was about field conditions and player safety.”
“It wasn’t until we got to Aloha Stadium the next day — the day before the match against Trinidad and Tobago — that we finally saw, for the first time, how bad the stadium’s field truly was. The conditions were such that our coach shortened practice to a brief 30-minute training session so we wouldn’t risk injury before the game. There were sharp rocks ingrained all over the field. They were everywhere. The artificial turf was actually pulling up out of the ground, and the turf itself was both low-grade and aging. This was a playing surface that looked like it hadn’t been replaced in years.”
Soccer is our job. Our bodies are our jobs. And nothing should ever be put in competition with our protection and safety as players.
U.S. Soccer Women’s National Team head coach Jill Ellis said, “It just wasn’t a surface that we were prepared to put our players on.”
“We are sorry for the fans, but we couldn’t step on the field,” said Abby Wambach.
Just as the state has launched its own investigation, Attorneys Brandee Faria and John Perkin filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation and the Aloha Stadium Authority. Initially, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Oahu soccer fans who bought six tickets, spending more than $300. Now there is a cry of support from fans all around the country. The lost money is the least of the concerns – although when you add in the cost of travel, fans from out of state lost much more money than local fans, to see the match in Hawaii. “Fans are outraged,” Fair said, “An even bigger outrage is they didn’t find out until an email notification at 12:59 a.m. on the day of the event.”
The state Department of Consumer Protection has launched a formal investigation to determine why soccer officials failed to notify attendees sooner.
“Frankly, the conduct that I know of at this point is very disturbing and I think it warrants looking into the circumstances surrounding it,” said Stephen Levins, executive director of the state Office of Consumer Protection.
In an interview with the New York Times, Sunil Gulati, the president of U.S. Soccer, said the last-minute cancellation of a women’s national team exhibition game over the weekend in Honolulu because of an unsafe artificial turf field was “absolutely a black eye for this organization.”
Gulati apologized for the Federation’s “series of mistakes.”
If you thought the heated debate over artificial turf had died down, and the cry regarding the conditions women were asked to play on was over – think again. While the controversy over playing on turf in the 2015 Women’s World Cup may be gone from the headlines, the topic is only beginning to boil.
