'There's a fish on the court!' Pictures lay bare flood disasters at Shropshire sports clubs counting huge costs
A year on from Storm Babet, Shropshire sports clubs have faced bills in the tens of thousands to recover from increasingly frequent flooding.
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Football pitches, tennis courts and bowling greens have been left sodden by "biblical" rain and, in some cases, left filthy with sewage.
Clubs in the region are now lending their voices to a national campaign to draw attention to the impact of extreme weather on sport.
The Save Our Grassroots campaign, with supporters including Match of the Day host Gary Lineker, Arsenal legend and Strictly Come Dancing contestant Paul Merson, rower Helen Glover and naturalist Steve Backshall, has been staging football matches in wellies and encouraged people to write to their MPs to highlight the plight of grassroots sport and public green spaces.
Shrewsbury Lawn Tennis Club, on the edge of the Severn just along from The Quarry, has flooded three times over the past two years.
"We watched the grass courts turn into a lake in a couple of hours," said long-time club member and volunteer Karen Pearce after floods on September 8. "It was so deep a heron flew in looking for a quick dinner.
"The £2,500 cost of calling in specialist cleaners to remove heavy silt and restore drainage after Storm Henk last January is now built into the annual budget and affects membership costs.
