We have had big issues with our pitch for a number of years and reading the BBC, it seems that artificial pitches could be coming back http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15722636.stm. Would you be OK with this if it happened at Vicarage Road? I am sure many of you have played on the new generation turf, it is certainly come a long way since I remember as a youth playing at on them and a long punt bouncing about 10 feet over my head. It is pretty realisitc and would save us countless amount of money on preparing and repairing the pitches each season, plus, the club could hire the ground out all the time bring in that 24/7 income we so wish for.
good points , well made , like youn say , i have played on the old style artificial pitchs , and i played at Luton as well , the surfaces are quality now....
The new 3G pitches are good, not as good as grass, but still a vast improvement over the old ones. I see this benefitting non-league teams more than league teams though. The opportunities for income throughout the week will improve greatly and there's also less chance of fixture congestion. I don't think I would like to see it at Watford though.
I'm all for it and I'm sure that by the time they've changed the regulations and pitches are starting to be installed, the technology would have advanced again. The last thing I'd want though is to see Watford playing on a pitch that looks nothing like grass. If they could match the look and feel of a desso pitch and be playable on 24/7 i think watford would benefit so much from the extra revenue from not just saracens, but other sports clubs and associations.
Just to add I play on 1 of these pitches weekly, they are great but I wouldn't go for a sliding tackle, still get a case of carpet burn going on
I think each club should be different as some clubs would lose an advantage with this. Imagine a league two club that was used to playing direct football partly because they had to due to their pitch being a cabbage patch, and over time they had become very good at playing the direct football. If someone like Arsenal then came to town for a cup game then they would have half a chance due to the surface, however if they we replaying on something perfectly flat then they would immediately lose that advantage. The other point is that the powers that be in football really are facking clueless. There are so many issues within the game that turn people away yet instead of trying o right those wrongs they insist on fart assing about with stuff that doesn’t need changing. There was nothing wrong with the offside rule until it got changed for the sake of changing it. And is it really that criminal for a player to jump over the hoardings to celebrate a goal that is constitutes a booking and a fine? The top brass haven’t a clue what the regular punter wants.
The thing is they last about the same time as a deso pitch so you're not saving any maintenance fees. You're gaining a bit more playability in the middle of the season at the expens of a superb serface at each end. For those reasons I'm out.
At a ground like ours, where we seem to have built it on top of a lake, I think a modern artificial pitch would be perfect. Technology has caught up in this area, it's time for a change.
3G is decent... For a monday night 6 a side league where you are not allowed to slide tackle. It don't think it's advanced enough yet personally and I can't imagine Sarries would be too happy about playing on an artificial pitch. Environmental factors are taking too much away from what the game is about. There was a time where Sunday league and pro football wasn't too much difference, now it's as though they are turning into two completely different things with carpet like pitch conditions, the aerodynamic footballs etc compared to a bobbly boggy pitch, and ordinary ball (as long as it's round it goes). There's too big a difference and I can't imagine training on a grass surface, then playing competatively on an artificial surface would help performance either.
I don't think they would have been too bothered considering the pitch at Copthall was going to be 3G.
If God had intended us to play football in the sky, he'd have put a 3G, rubber crumb surface up there.
3G with the little black rubber bits is absolutely horrible, can't stand it, to the point where I recently got asked to play for a side who played their home games on 3G and turned them down purely because of that. No idea what top level synthetic pitches are like though. Either way I'd always prefer grass, the game is already artificial enough as it is.
My house is covered in the little black bits from 3G pitches from whenever I take my shoes off after a game. No to the plastic pitch; they're horrible and we'd be even more of a laughing stock than we already our with our three-sided ground.
No no no! Plastic pitches will always be related to bas tard teams like scum town and QPR. when bas sells the land to segro and we move to harefield we can have a practice pitch with plastic but not at the vic, let's at least keep that memory sacred
Here is a bit more info on the Desso Grassmaster product. http://www.dessosports.com/en/desso-grassmaster/
