A look at synthetic grass for soccer fields

Artificial grass had been used in the United States since the mid 1960s in sports stadiums where baseball and gridiron sport was professionally played. In the early 1980s, soccer clubs in England decided it could be a suitable alternative to natural grass for their stadiums. As they pointed out at the time, the problem with natural grass was that over the season, it was subject to great wear and tear. By the end of the winter months, the pitch was normally no more than a mud playing field surrounded by a grass fringe.



Therefore in 1981, QPR’s Loftus Road grass pitch was ripped up and replaced with an artificial surface, shortly followed by Preston North End’s Deepdale pitch, Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road pitch and Oldham Athletic’s Boundary Park pitch. The age of the "plastic pitch" as many dubious soccer supporters named them, was at hand. While the four teams hailed their pitches as a success, compared with the old mud, sand and grass remnant predecessors, there were numerous criticisms. Player suffered a higher number of injuries, the surfaces were hard, joint shock injuries were caused by the unyielding plying surface and to fall down, quite common on these pitches could lead to carpet burning injuries.



Critics claimed the pitches caused the ball to bounce wildly as well as irregularly and cause players to easily lose their footing. As a final comment, fans said the pitches looked ugly and plastic. With all these criticism, the clubs one after another returned to traditional grass. The final nail in the coffin was when UEFA and FIFA banned artificial grass pitches in the early 1990s, after the American soccer teams had also abandoned them. This was seen by many as the end of artificial pitches for soccer. This was not in fact the case, a battle had been lost, but the war was far from over.



By 2001 and the beginning of the new century, artificial grass had come a long way, so much so that UEFA and FIFA joined up with German company Polytan. Polytan had been one of the pioneering companies to produce infill artificial grass; infill was a rubber compound which was used in combination with fine sand, produced a far more real grass-like playing surface. The result of this work meant that by 2005 Dutch club Almelo received the first FIFA 2 Star certificate for a top flight club. The next important milestone was when the Stadion Salzburg in Austria was awarded the second 2 Star certificate. That meant international matches in the UEFA Euro 2008 competition were played, for the first time on an artificial surface.



From 2008 onwards, these third generation playing surfaces were gaining far greater acceptance. The pitch surface played like a good quality grass pitch and the danger of injury cause by the surface was considered to be even less than on a traditional grass pitch. The artificial grass pitches offered many advantages for clubs playing in cold climates, as the surface was far more resistant to ice and snow than grass pitches. This was particularly attractive in Russia where the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow has an artificial grass surface. Today, synthetic grass is the way to go for soccer fields undoubtedly and this great invention has even made its way to many private homes and their lawns.



Own a football club or a rugby club. Then by no way you can prevent the natural grass and maintain the field. Click the following links for artificial grass or artificial turfs at a discounted price.