{"id":508349,"date":"2026-02-27T21:40:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/508349\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T21:40:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:40:35","slug":"afl-pre-season-clash-between-richmond-and-melbourne-abandoned-as-lightning-strikes-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/508349\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL pre-season clash between Richmond and Melbourne abandoned as lightning strikes twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AFL pre-season Community Series clash between Melbourne<\/a> and Richmond<\/a> has been abandoned after lightning struck twice.<\/p>\n

Play was initially suspended suspended for 36 minutes due to lightning early in the first quarter in Ballarat before eventually resuming.<\/p>\n

But when severe weather struck again during the third quarter, officials moved swiftly to call the game off, given the lights at Mars Stadium aren\u2019t fit to host a night game.<\/p>\n

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Arrow<\/a><\/p>\n

Melbourne led 6-0 just two minutes and 40 seconds of game time into the first quarter when players were whisked off the field.<\/p>\n

When the game finished with almost 14 minutes of game time still left in the third quarter, Melbourne held a 78-43 lead over the Tigers.<\/p>\n

The possibility of lightning wasn\u2019t totally unexpected before the game, but signs looked positive when the ground was bathed in sunshine as recently as 30 minutes before the first ball-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lightning has come in extremely quickly,\u201d Nick Dal Santo said during the first delay.<\/p>\n

If lightning is deemed to be within 10kms of the venue, there must be a break in play and players are taken from the field.<\/p>\n

The weather completed a dramatic opening few minutes to the clash after Melbourne big man Luker Kentfield went down with both a leg injury and concerns for a concussion.<\/p>\n

Concussion was later ruled out but he will be sent for scans on his leg.<\/p>\n

In what can only be described as a bizarre coincidence, it\u2019s the third lightning-interrupted game Melbourne has been involved in since 2021.<\/p>\n

They also had a 40-minute delay against Brisbane in 2023 when the lights at the Gabba went out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Iconic Melbourne road to be named after Ron Barassi<\/p>\n

2 min read<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

AFL facing major fixturing headache over MCG availability<\/p>\n

2 min read<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The AFL pre-season Community Series clash between Melbourne and Richmond has been abandoned after lightning struck twice. Play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,1625,7804,672,3863,588,85],"class_list":["post-508349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-lifestyle","tag-melbourne-demons","tag-richmond-tigers","tag-sponsored-content","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}