I have witnesses to this. Two days before the New Orleans Saints — and the quarterback who enjoyed the most productive season in NFL history — played in San Francisco, I was warning a couple of NFL fans here in Abu Dhabi about Candlestick Park.

I have spent many days in Candlestick, particularly in the 1990s (when the Niners were in the playoffs all the time and the Rams and Raiders weren’t, and SF was a one-day up-and-back road trip from SoCal), and almost all of those days were profoundly unpleasant.

I was telling that to these two guys at the Thirty-First Floor Bar at the Abu Dhabi Holiday Inn (far nicer than it sounds) more than 48 hours before kickoff. “Beware The Stick …”

The Saints are a dome team, and bad things tend to happen to dome teams when they venture outdoors.

And Candlestick is a peculiar form of “outdoors”. Not dependably frozen, this time of year, like Green Bay or Chicago might be. Not potentially mild like Los Angeles or Tampa.

Candlestick is one of the roughest places to play in the NFL. It’s a massive pain just to get there, and a bigger one to sit there. Trust me on this. I can talk about it at length with minimal research. And Saints fans now can talk all about it — if they watched their team turn over the ball five times and lose to the 49ers in the NFL divisional playoffs.

Here is what you can expect at The Stick:

–Cold. Surprising cold. Candlestick Park is on a sort of salt pan that juts into San Francisco Bay. The wind blows there. All the time. It is cold there in August. In January, it usually is miserable. You hear “San Francisco” and you think “ah, sunny California” … but Candlestick is not actually part of California; don’t let the map confuse you. Figure on temps around 50 at kickoff, plunging by the fourth quarter.

–Then there is the wind. The wind always blows at The Stick. Winter, spring, summer and fall. This is what makes it dependably awful to venture into. When the baseball Giants played their home games there, pop flies were often ordeals/embarrassments. A guy could camp under a fly … and it would land 20 feet from him. Something about the geography of Candlestick Point — sticking into the bay, open to northern winds. And however cold it was, the wind made make it colder.

–The water table. If you are wearing the three-quarter-inch spikes on your shoes … you will tap the water table. It is inches below the turf. The area is a swamp. Did I mention that? Most of the parking lots are unpaved, and if it rains at all the whole place is going to flood.

–Candlestick was a horrible place to play baseball games, and attendance reflected it, when the Giants were not quite sharp. In the 1990s they offered the Croix de Candlestick to fans who stayed until the end of extra-inning games. The pin bears the words “Veni, Vidi, Vixi” — I came, I saw, I survived.

NFL playoffs games there were always awful, and I saw at least six of them in the 1990s. Cold and wet and the media were jammed into a ridiculously small press box up on the edge of the stadium, and if you planned to take a deep breath the guy next to you needed to exhale. It was that tight.

The all-timer awful situation was the Mud Bowl, in 1993, when the 49ers and Redskins played in a swamp in a playoff game there. It had rained most of the week, and Candlestick doesn’t drain at all … (Why would it? It’s about six inches above sea level) and the field was much almost immediately turned into goo. The 49ers won, 20-13.

And I am pretty sure that was the night that, after making the treacherous slog through sucking mud, in the dark, of course, out to the distant lot where my rental car was parked, I drove said rental car into a pool of water about three feet deep, killing the engine. It was hours after the game, and it was still raining, and the place was nearly empty and very dark. Water was leaking in the doors, and I didn’t want to get out of the car because then it would flood massively … but the motor wouldn’t turn over. And, mind, this instant lake was on the main road out of the parking area. Paved, and all. I had no idea three feet of water could collect on a four-lane road.

After five minutes of literally cursing my fate and imagining all the awful things that could happen, someone drove past and said, “Did you put it in ‘park’?” I nodded. Of course, I had. Did I look like an idiot? But I hadn’t. After he rolled off, I shifted the auto to P, turned the key, and the car started up. A miracle. I drove it out of the lake, floor mats oozing, back to the San Jose airport and barely made my plane to SoCal. I always feared the rental company would come after me for returning a drowned car … but they never did. Maybe that’s just the norm up there.

Thus, I am convinced Candlestick is the slowest track in the NFL. Thick grass, often not cut much, all that water just below the surface … Visitors will find their timing shot to hell.

As it turns out, Candlestick was (outwardly) kind to the Saints today. Temps in the 60s, no rain.

But don’t try to tell me that the Saints turning it over five times was an accident. Even a mild breeze, a little unexpected chill, an inability to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as normal …the ball starts coming out of your hands. The turnovers kept the Saints from getting 3 and perhaps 7, early, and set up a Niners TD and field goal. That’s a 17-point swing right there.

Candlestick rose up and smote the Saints, at least as much as did the Niners.

The key to getting past San Fran in the playoffs is play them at your place. If the game is in the Superdome, no way do the 49ers win 36-32. Drew Brees would have thrown for 600 on that perfectly even and dry track, and started thinking about Green Bay — which is only cold.

The New York Giants ought to be worried about somehow beating the Packers, because if they do, they get to play at Candlestick next weekend. And I don’t think they’re giving out those cool pins anymore.