WHAT A PAIN IN THE GRASS Craig Swan

Worst pitch we’ve seen in a live advert for Scottish football wasn’t drastic plastic at Rugby Park – it was on a real surface for Dons v Celts. Our clubs have got to sort out their turf

THE pitch was a scandal. The game is being beamed across the UK and it looks like Sunday League.

It’s amateurish. What on earth will the sponsors think?

But this isn’t Kilmarnock’s drastic plastic we are talking here. It’s Pittodrie.

And if people are going to constantly have a bark about the surface in Ayrshire or at Hamilton, they want to have a look at the natural heaps ruining the game’s credibility and hampering the standard.

Steve Clarke has got just about everything right since going to Kilmarnock.

But one point where the Rugby Park boss is wrong is when it comes to talking about the pitch. Clarke’s response to criticism is to say no one moaned about the pitch earlier this term when teams were winning there and it has only raised its head since his team started beating opposition with outstanding regularity. He deserves to be cut some slack because he was in England for the first four years of its use. But Clarke’s not correct because the artificial surface at Killie has been hammered since it was laid. Brendan Rodgers was slagging it a year ago and that was when his team had taken maximum points from two visits. Ex-Rangers boss Mark Warburton was among others who were scathing. Kallum Higginbotham was one of the most outspoken on artificial pitches, so the scrutiny has long been there. Higginbotham changed his tune when Killie signed him and you can’t expect employees to pelt their own club.

But where the point is missed is when it comes to others.

Killie’s pitch was across the globe on Sky Sports last weekend. But Aberdeen’s was on the screens the following day for their game against Celtic and it was even worse.

Killie go there for a Scottish Cup quarter-final against the Dons on Saturday and it’s fair to say that bare and rutted midden in the Granite City is a bigger leveller than any plastic surface.

Clarke’s team were at Tynecastle on Tuesday night, another natural surface that has been a disaster this season. So bad it’s getting ripped up in the summer.

The weather has been garbage this winter and it’s not easy for groundstaff. But this is happening year on year. This column said last year sponsors should tell clubs a percentage of the cash they hand out must be put to the upkeep of pitches.

You wouldn’t ask Lewis Hamilton to race down a track full of potholes or ask Rory McIlroy to putt on greens full of divots and bare patches.

Yet the product we are trying to sell looks appalling.

Motherwell have spent money and got it right. But Aberdeen v Celtic was the top of the table game, a showpiece – and it looked as if a pitch had been hired off the council.

It’s not right that we have artificial surfaces. They give an unfair advantage to Killie and Hamilton as those two squads train on them every day and get used to the speed and bounce.

It also can’t be right when opposing managers can’t pick players because of it, such as St Johnstone’s Tommy Wright with striker Stevie McLean or Rodgers with Jozo Simunovic.

But it’s downright hypocrisy for detractors not to point out shambolic pitches elsewhere that make us look amateur.

That rutted midden is a bigger leveller than any plastic surface