umbrella with a flat six on his way to 56! Sadly, in the days before Duckworth-Lewis, there was no result. But, while cricket enjoyed its brief flirtation with artificial turf, less than a year later football was thrown into chaos by it. Queens Park Rangers dug up its grass pitch and installed an artificial one, losing its first home game on September 1st 1981 to Luton Town who, ironically, went on to install their own ‘plastic pitch’ in 1985. By the mid-1980s there were four plastic grass pitches in operation in the English Football League (QPR, Luton Town, Preston North End and Oldham Athletic) but fans and players never liked them and, in 1988, the English Football Association outlawed them for good.


While football at grass roots level made good use of the technology - Islington Council had installed the UK’s first synthetic surface at Market Road, London, in 1971 - and other councils were immediately attracted to the high-rent, low maintenance opportunity - the sport of hockey positively thrived. Before the invention of first- generation artificial surfaces, the quick-


silver skills of players from Pakistan and India had enabled their countries to put a stranglehold on the international game, winning four of the first five Hockey World Cups and eleven out of the first fifteen Olympic Gold Medals to be awarded in the sport.


But, giving stronger, more powerful nations access to super-flat surfaces for the first time, removing unpredictable bounce and lessening the need for the sublime stick work previously required to control a ball on grass, meant associations from Europe and Australia began to encourage a whole new style of game. From unparalleled success Pakistan and India have endured an Olympic gold medal drought since 1984. For hockey, artificial turf technology couldn’t develop fast enough. Early sand-filled surfaces offered flatness but were brutally abrasive on knuckles, knees and elbows, and clubs struggled to maintain them properly.


The sand infill was used to support


the fibre in an upright position, and regular distribution and topping up were essential in maintaining an upright pile. Without maintenance, the


pitches became hard, fast, bumpy and often lifted. At Bisham Abbey and the National Sports Centre at Lilleshall, Shropshire, 2G water-based pitches took the game to another level, allowing players to dive headlong to deflect shots goalwards and enabling keepers to pioneer a slide-save technique, skidding prone along the surface and blocking with an ever-increasingly protected body. Turf technology was at the very


forefront of changing the face of the game. The heads of sticks became increasingly smaller to allow for different techniques, such as reverse stick trapping and hitting, players had confidence to play first-time passes and, at penalty corners, players could now drag-flick the ball at high velocity and high trajectory towards the goal. Conversely, hockey is now coming under threat from artificial turf development. Many clubs rely on council pitches to stage their weekly fixtures, yet the local authorities themselves are replacing old installations with new 3G pitches, and the longer turf, designed to be the very best alternative to natural grass,


has come of age?


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138