Hybrid pitch

Celtic and Hearts are to lay hybrid pitches

The hybrid surface which is a mixture of natural grass and artificial turf fibres seems to be the way ahead for some football clubs. They are not cheap but will Aberdeen install one at their new Stadium. They will probably wait and see how Hearts and Celtic get on with their ones first.

The hybrid surface which is a mixture of natural grass and artificial turf fibres seems to be the way ahead for some football clubs. They are not cheap but will Aberdeen install one at their new Stadium. They will probably wait and see how Hearts and Celtic get on with their ones first.

Most premier league clubs (in new stadiums at least) have these hybrid Grassmaster pitches and have been using them for a while.  Certainly not cheap but does help retain the grass growth better.  A no brainer imo.

I'm pretty certain we laid a grass/artificial hybrid a few years back. I was under the impression that was what we have been using for a while now.

The current pitch surface at Pittodrie is a fibresand surface which the club relaid at the end of last season.

It's a silica sand with loads of 35mm long polypropylene fibres per square yard which are designed to prevent pitches from bobbling and going bare.

The club first laid this type of surface in the summer of 2013

The problem with that sort of surface is that it needs around 8-10 weeks to bed in properly from laying and sewing of the seed that compliments it.

Pittodrie's playing surface hasn't had a break for that long, so when this season started and with the coolish summer that happened, it wasn't ready to be played on, hence why it looks and feels terrible right now.

The proximity of the pitch to the sea doesn't help either with a less vigorous sports ground seed being used for it's toughness to being walked/stamped on but not to the atmosphere it's used in.

It's worth noting that Manchester United have used this exact same surface for well over 10 years now with some success. They also have the luxury of having an important 10 weeks between usage most close seasons.

I'm in favour of any sort of hybrid surface that will work, if it's given enough time to bed in properly.

With summer European football seemingly on the menu if Aberdeen maintain its league finishes, then the current surface won't work.

It may cost more, but I'd personally go with importing the turf from the Netherlands used by a lot of top Premiership/Championship/Bundesliga clubs and Wembley on occasion.

The new stadium will most likely have the same surface as the current in my opinion, as it's farther from the sea and won't damage so readily and costs less to maintain than the Dutch type mentioned earlier.

The best surfaces I have seen in Scotland in my years here, are the old Rugby Park one (before they redeveloped) and Dens Park back in the eighties. Livingston had a decent one also in the noughties

Good post min, very interesting.

Aye, that was the weird thing about Killie's pitch, the grass one always seemed in decent nick. I don't have too many issues with their plastic one if I'm honest, it seems a lot truer than Hamilton's. I expect we'll keep oors hingin on until we move.

Good post min, very interesting.

 

Aye, that was the weird thing about Killie's pitch, the grass one always seemed in decent nick. I don't have too many issues with their plastic one if I'm honest, it seems a lot truer than Hamilton's. I expect we'll keep oors hingin on until we move.

Killie's plastic carpet was laid to save money not because it was a better surface than their existing grass one.

Wonder if Hamilton are going to go back to grass or the grass master surface?

Hopefully a hybrid, that'd be decent. Get the tims to pay for it, seeing as they're always moaning about it.

Football was, is and should be played on grass.

Having been at Montrose and Forfar last month, these modern plastic type pitches aren't good for the game.

Arguably not good for the players too. We had possibly the longest delay of any match, more than one hour as the poor Berwick guy suffered a bad break, couldn't be moved on the pitch and the ambulance coming from Ninewells took ages to get there.

I'm starting to get conscious that I'm sounding like a resister of change, normally reserved for fixed mindsets and old mannies but on this occasion, I see zero pros and only cons for non-grass.

I can see why they have a place in the lower leagues. The number of called off games and the absolute state of pitches for 50% of the season makes for pretty atrocious fitba. The ability to train and play on them is vital with decreasing public space, and the added revenue from hiring out the surface. The weather even affected us for three months this season, when the pitch was a disgrace after a heavy winter. I think that there are grades of pitch too, Hamiltons was definitely worse than Killie's for example, and also whether or not they decide to water them (or water them too much) which has a more radical effect than it would on grass.

In terms of injury, it'd be interesting to see the stats. There is the odd player who struggles - for whatever reason - to run on the surface, but very few. On the opposite side, I suspect you see far less wild challenges on a plastic surface as people are more wary of throwing themselves into tackles on it. Any time I see it mentioned, I here anecdotal evidence (Fyvie is one that still gets mentioned, which is a long time ago to look for a correlation) but it seems to ignore the fact that people get injured very regularly on grass too. Looking to the future, it's clear that a lot of kids will have grown up playing on these surfaces more regularly than their senior equivalents, so perhaps the injuries will be far less likely.

In general, I'm with you though. I think that a good grass pitch should be possible for the top flight teams all season round. However, us, Hertz, Hamilton, Killie, Motherwell and probably others have all failed in that regard this season and very regularly in recent years. Hopefully the hybridisation of pitches will assist in future years, but our own delve into that has been fairly non-productive in recent times, so I remain fairly sceptical.

Ach, makes no difference.  We can punt it up to Cosgrove whether we play on grass or plastic 

Ach, makes no difference.  We can punt it up to Cosgrove whether we play on grass or plastic 

:lolabove:

As for plastic pitches until they are as good as a well maintained grass pitch then they have no place in top divisions.