Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

The use of synthetic turf in football continues to generate much debate, particularly
with the growing interest from professional clubs. SAPCA CEO Chris Trickey offers
guidance on its development, performance standards and long-term benefits
ynthetic turf pitches could be making
a shock comeback if some Football
League clubs get their way. The debate
has begun to heat up following
a decision by clubs such as Wycombe and Accrington
to investigate reintroducing synthetic
turf pitches. A subsequent Sky Sports debate
called Turf Wars fuelled the debate and all 72
Football League clubs are now being asked to
discuss the issue in three divisional meetings.
SAPCA, the trade body that represents
sports and play facility construction in the UK,
helps the sector to separate the facts from the
myths regarding this contentious subject.
The most significant change over the last decade
has been the much greater use of ‘third
generation’ or 3G synthetic grass surfaces,
using relatively long-pile, and very sophisticated,
yarns with rubber and sand in-fills. These
surfaces have been developed to replicate the
playing performance of high-quality natural
turf surfaces and have become very popular
for both football and rugby. Needless to say,
they perform very much better than the old
sand-filled surfaces installed at a number of
professional football clubs in the 1980s.
There have been very significant advances
in the yarns and fibres used for synthetic turf
surfaces. There is now a much wider range of
yarns available, with different profiles, shapes
and thicknesses, which make it easier to
achieve the playing performance needed for
individual sports, and with greater consistency.
Fibres are now also more durable, enabling
surfaces to achieve longer life expectancy.
PIC: ©WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
The choice of surface is sometimes presented
as a battle between natural and synthetic
turf, but few would argue that most players
would prefer to play on a top quality natural
pitch, if they can. FIFA’s Quality Concept
(see box out) seeks to promote football turf
mainly in regions where the climate makes
it impossible to play matches on good natural
turf all year round.
A quick look at old footage from Match of
the Day will highlight that the quality of natural
turf pitches at the top level of the game
has improved dramatically over recent years
and are a great credit to the groundsmen
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Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012