The Whangarei District Council is urging supporters attending weekend sports events to monitor www.isthegameon.co.nz to check for late cancellations.
The advice comes after games for junior codes at Kensington Sportspark, scheduled for June 11, were cancelled a day earlier - but many supporters were caught offguard. Games for senior codes -
usually in the afternoon - were on and the Northern Advocate understands those who gathered for soccer and rugby thought the council and the Northland Rugby Union cancelled matches at the last minute due to bad weather.
But council spokeswoman Ann Midson said supportersneeded to check the website , which provided updates on the status of 24 sports grounds throughout Whangarei.
"On the website people should look at the line that says 'comment on status' as well as the line that says 'open' or 'closed' because the status line explains the situation," she explained. Any decision on whether to close a field was usually made on a Friday afternoon after assessing the ground, the weather forecast and after consultation with different codes.
Discussions usually took place early to mid-afternoon, and a final decision was made no later than 3pm, she said.
When there was a closure, code organisers used telephone trees to inform their teams.
"If a field is going to be closed for junior games [in the morning] and open for senior games, this is also done in consultation with the codes who contact their people and the website is updated accordingly. On rare occasions we may find that there is a storm on Friday afternoon or evening. On those occasions we check the condition of the field early in the morning and call the organisers for each code who set off their telephone trees if a closure is suddenly required for the Saturday."
On June 10 Ms Midson said the decision to cancel junior games on Saturday morning was made in consultation with junior code organisers.
"The junior code organisers set off their own telephone trees in this situation but from time to time some people fail to get the message.
"The best thing for people to do is to check the website and make sure they are available if someone from their code calls," she advised.
