There's a lovely, if tortuous, cycle route just south of Inverness - a 3km climb to the highest point is hard going, trust me - which takes you past Essich farm and rejoins the main road just south of Dores. Some of the farmer's fields at the top of the hill are filled with cattle, sheep or horses. At this time of year, others still have a ploughed appearance. If there has been heavy rainfall, there will be puddles everywhere and, depending on the contours, some of the fields may end up containing a small lake. There is often a faint smell of dung in the air.
Whatever the time of year, whatever the weather, I would wager that each of these fields would be more suitable for football than Aberdeen's Pittodrie pitch has been in recent weeks.
The Dons' home game against Ross County just over a week ago was an embarrassment. I'm sure High Definition was not meant to show up divots in glorious technicolor, but it was blatantly obvious to every viewer that the playing surface was hideous. Rumour has it that Aberdeen's players had to send out a search party to locate winger Jonny Hayes after he fell down one of the potholes.
On that Tuesday evening, you probably could have counted the blades of grass at Pittodrie.
Neither team even bothered trying to play a passing game; by the end of ninety minutes the matchball had been punted so often it was bruised. Aberdeen had to substitute their target man striker Rory Fallon at half-time and play the diminutive Niall McGinn through the middle, and spent the second period aiming high balls at the forward which he could never hope to win. Why? Because passing it to his feet was impossible.
Ross County won the match 1-0. Watching it on ESPN cost me an hour and a half of my life that I'll never have back. Even Barcelona couldn't have played properly on that pitch. I would wager that, if twenty games of football were played on that surface, none of them would have entertained the neutral, even if Aberdeen weren't playing.
I remember being impressed at the time by how Ross County had apparently done their homework, and set up their team to play to the conditions. A few days later, I discovered why; they were already used to it. The Highland Derby on Saturday was contested on a pitch which had so much sand on it that it could technically have been classified as a beach. One flank was bereft of grass from the halfway line to the by-line at one end. The consequence? Another 90 minutes of hoof-ball, goalscoring opportunities at a premium, and a goalless draw.
Even Inverness, despite having an award-winning groundsman, are not without problems. At a recent match against Dundee United, winger Aaron Doran had to check a mazy dribble when the ball hit a divot and literally leapt off the ground to about the height of his thigh. An under-20s rugby match between Scotland and Wales takes place this weekend at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium; god knows what the place will look like afterwards.
It's not as if this is a new problem - remember the issues Motherwell had with Fir Park a few years back? Scottish football has enough trouble selling itself to anyone other than die-hard fans, but poor pitches invariably lead to poor games. And, with football from England, or Germany, or Italy, or Outer Mongolia, only a few clicks of the TV remote away, it's just one more reason to add to the list why casual football watchers tend to give the SPL a miss.
So thank the lord above that artificial pitches are coming back on the agenda in a big way.
The SFA and the PFA have recently launched a survey of Scotland's professional footballers to ascertain their views on synthetic surfaces. We're not talking about the glorified concrete used by QPR in the 1980s, but the lovely soft, rubber-crumb stuff now a feature at many a 5-a-side football centre around the UK. We've seen these pitches used for international matches, and Champions' League games; Celtic's best performance of this season, a 3-2 win away to Moscow Spartak, was on an artificial pitch.
Seven SFL grounds (not counting Pittodrie or the Global Energy Stadium!!) no longer use grass - Montrose's Links Park, Stenhousemuir's Ochilview (shared by East Stirling) and Alloa's Recreation Park installed artificial turf in 2007, with Airdrie United's Excelsior Stadium following suit in 2010. Last summer Clyde's Broadwood Stadium, Forfar's Station Park, and Annan Athletic's Galabank joined the club. I've had the opportunity to walk onto Montrose's pitch (it's all about who you know!) and it was fantastic. I've watched two matches there, where, even in the Scottish third division, attempts were being made at playing a passing game, and with more success than you might expect from a side who felt the need to sign Phil McGuire last summer.
Most importantly perhaps, it makes sense from a financial point of view. Of course, the chances of postponed matches are dramatically reduced - though one time I was at Links Park on a Friday night their match against Elgin was nearly abandoned due to fog and one wag in the home end yelled at female assistant Morag Pirie "Can I walk you back to your car, Morag?". The need for expensive undersoil heating - still necessary to playing in Scotland's top flight, even though it is not a requirement in the English Premier League - is removed, saving a fortune as it costs several thousand pounds an hour to switch on.
Players can also train at the ground during the week without damaging it, thereby saving on alternative facilities; I can imagine that Inverness players would jump at the chance to move away from the windswept Fort George field they use. And in the evenings the pitch can be used by the community, for coaching kids or for 5-a-side football leagues or the like; the latter makes a nice little earner.
On that last point, it's worth wondering what state Dunfermline would be in now had the SPL (which still forbids artificial pitches) not made them tear up East End Park's synthetic pitch in 2005, robbing them of useful income...
There are still some naysayers out there. Mark McGhee, then Aberdeen boss, publicly blamed Fraser Fyvie's cruciate ligament injury on Alloa's pitch a few years ago - though it was also claimed that Fyvie had chosen inappropriate boots for the surface. Meanwhile, Rangers have fantastic 3G facilities at their Murray Park training ground...but manager Ally McCoist incredibly refuses to let his players train on them because he says the injury risk is too high! McCoist too blamed a player's injury - that of David Templeton - on an artificial surface at Annan, but the player himself admitted afterwards he had ignored his physio's advice to wear more suitable boots. It is easy to find anecdotal evidence of an increased casualty rate, but I note a study was actually done in Norwegian football - and published in the British Medical Journal - which documented more than 600 injuries to first team players in training and matches between 2004 and 2007 and showed no difference in injury rates depending on the surface.
The one thing we don't know for certain is the long term effect - will playing regularly on artificial pitches increase the risk of osteoarthritis in hip and knee joints in later life, for example? Given several pros who spent their entire career on grass still need replacement joints at a young age, though, it's reasonable to suspect it may not make much of a difference.
In my opinion, the argument for artificial pitches is overwhelming. At a time where Scottish football clubs need to increase their income, and improve the quality of their product, it's increasingly hard to argue that plastic is the way forward.
L.
A very interesting post. There is always a big debate over the use of artificial grass in sport. As you have said there are so many advantages to using synthetic grass especially in the conditions you have spoken about. The technology behind it has moved on so far in recent years that it is definitely something worth considering.
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