Plastic pitches back in the news

Plastic in the news (again) today

By Editor

On the BBC sport website, it has been announced that Dunfermline Athletic are to receive a grant from UEFA to install a new synthetic pitch.

This will be in time for the start of the 2004-05 season. The club have been chosen along with other clubs from Europe to test the latest third generation synthetic pitches.

It is stated that UEFA will be underwriting part of the installation cost to the not inconsiderable amount of £130,000.

Although Dunfermline's pitch faired quite poorly last season, £130,000 would go a long way to providing a quality surface don't you think?

The burning question though is why UEFA are so bent on trying to re-introduce synthetics?

Why don't UEFA spend this grant funding on natural turf development? After all natural grass is the choice of players!

New seed cultivars, drainage systems and root zone specifications have improved immensely in the last five to ten years, without financial help from UEFA and FIFA. Imagine the quality of natural grass surfaces that we could produce with a little bit of financial help from them.

The BBC sports news article is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/d/dunfermline_athletic/3050978.stm for those of you that want to read it, but on the message boards, one of the comments read - Nothing on earth can be as boring as that!

As Keith Kent said in his article in April ( http://www.pitchcare.com/magazine/article.php?id=673) 'If we change the pitches to be played on to artificial surfaces, we will end up with an artificial game. The artificial game played on artificial surfaces will be boring. Who'll go and watch the game then?'

We'd be interested to hear your comments, feel free to post your feelings on the Groans and Gallantry section of the message boards.