Tuesday, July 8, 2014

It's Finally Official. Tim Horton's Field Won't Be Ready for the First Two Ticats Games

It has finally been confirmed what has been obvious to anyone who bothered to go down to the new stadium and observe, Tim Horton's Field won't be ready for the first two Ticat home games which will be played at McMaster. Labour Day seems to be the day drawn in the sand.

In some ways this is a bit of a story of bad journalism from local media (I'm looking at you, the Spectator, CHML, CHCH, and CBC Hamilton). It was obvious it wasn't going to be ready, but no one was willing to point out the obvious and say the emperor had no clothes. Or seats installed.

Why? Well the Ticats are a big advertiser and content source so I can understand from that perspective. I assume the Cats knew what was happening at a far earlier point and I also assume they thought that an earlier announcement would be bad for ticket sales. As it was, there was enough uncertainty that I'm sure a lot of people were leery of buying single game tickets in the summer. Still it is a big story and the local media dropped the ball. Score one for local bloggers and forum commenters and citizenry.

I suppose part of the muted reaction was that everyone knew the obvious so that when it was finally announced it wasn't a really big deal. Certainly as a season ticket holder I assumed it was coming.

I've beaten the dead horse enough and been vindicated so I'll move on. One last point about hosting at Mac. When last year as a reason not to host at Mac, the think of the children defence was employed as supposedly no one wanted to block traffic to the McMaster Children's Hospital. I suppose the fact that the stadium is limited in capacity for these games makes a difference, but to me it is a minor one. Still a lame argument nonetheless.

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