WE CAN HELP YOU KICK ON

THE Football Association and The Non-League Paper have teamed up to bring you a series of exclusive columns and features.

This week, National Facilities Manager Mark Pover explains how the FA can help clubs make key investment decisions.

LET’S face it, not many people liked doing their homework. But when a football club makes a big financial decision, it’s absolutely vital.

One of the jobs of the Facilities and Investment team here at the Football Association is to help clubs with the decision process when it comes to investing in their facilities.

The FA invests £20million a year into the Football Foundation (a charitable partnership with the Premier League and Government) which delivers facility improvements such as Parklife – large football hubs in major cities – or improving pitches, football grounds and facilities across the country.

We work with the County FAs and other partners to ensure that the investment goes into the right places delivering the right outcomes. Our role is to consider this from a strategic viewpoint so the money delivers the best projects for football.

Whether it’s the introduction of 3G pitches, new hybrid pitches – part artificial and part grass – or LED floodlights, we are making sure the information provided to clubs by companies selling their products is tried and tested as much as possible.

Take LED floodlights. Their introduction into the game has been driven by the market itself however, there’s a lot of mis-selling going on from companies trying to get a foothold in the market. Our role is to try and provide clubs with a completely independent view on whether the products can deliver on what they’re being sold as delivering.

Research

Although they are still making the halide floodlights currently used in many grounds, the chances are that the parts and systems will become obsolete over a short period of time. Some companies are trying to sell LED lights by insisting, ‘It may cost you £15-20,000 more on top of a normal system, but you’ll save money because the running costs and maintenance are lower so the return on investment will be covered over a lower period of time’.

The FA has been trialling a number of systems across the country where that particular comment is potentially true if you’re using your floodlights for four or five hours a night, six or seven nights a week, but if you’re only using the lights two nights a week, then the time period to pay back the additional cost can be far longer. This is where we’ve got to support clubs that are making these decisions.

Big organisations like the FA sometimes represent a negative viewpoint for some – something we’re working hard to change. But if you’re going to spend £50,000 of your own money you wouldn’t do it without doing some homework. We are doing the research for them so they can make a more informed decision.

The same goes for 3G pitches. There has been some negative press recently in relation to 3G rubber infill and perhaps some lazy journalism, where something was picked up from Holland and a big headline saying ‘3G pitches cause cancer’. No-one thought to do any homework and ask the question: is Dutch pitch construction different to UK.

The fact is that the UK has stricter requirements in relation to the supply of rubber infill and we are making this requirement even stronger. The Dutch have different processes to deliver their pitches.

In the UK, alongside other sports governing bodies and DEFRA, we have monitored numerous independent scientific studies on this issue, none of which have identified a risk to human health and environmental safety as a result of 3G pitches and rubber crumb. FIFA have come to the same conclusion along with the European Chemicals Agency. There’s no evidence or information to back that up.

We have a 3G technical guidance document and we urge clubs not to just take somebody’s word or be convinced by high pressure selling. Through the investment into the Football Foundation, we are paying somewhere in the region of £550,000-£600,000 for a full size 3G pitch. That’s including fencing and floodlighting.

Even for a Non-League club with the fencing and floodlighting in place, it should still cost around £300,000-£350,000. If somebody comes along and says they can put one down for £200,000 it should raise alarm bells and you should be asking how they can do this so cheap. The quality will be affected and they will be using cheap materials and cutting corners to reach this price. We have numerous pitches each year that fail the performance tests because it always comes back to the quality of construction and the materials used.

Targets

Then if a club are offered a 10-year warranty, what does that actually mean? – clubs need to get this in writing and read the small print. We’ve had one club recently who suffered very badly due to poor construction. They weren’t able to use their ground for a number of months, they lost money and players and nearly went into administration. Now they thought they were getting a good deal, but without FIFA and FA intervention they may not be in business. In the end we forced the company to rectify the faults and there was a quality pitch there.

We want clubs to insist upon a performance warranties and be clear about how many hours the pitch will be used. At the moment, I don’t think there is any company out there able to provide more than about five years performance warranty with high levels of usage every week.

So the club’s business plan needs to be based on about five-six years if it's well looked after and well maintained – not 10 years as is regularly anticipated.

It is widely known and promoted that clubs who have 3G surfaces have benefited financially on the basis there isn't anything else in their catchment area. During the week there is high demand for their facilities and they are supplying it. The problems can arise when there are a number of sites all competing for the same business and the club are anticipating high levels of use which they may not achieve and their income targets are not met.

There are some clubs being offered loans to put these pitches down. I’m always very wary of that because if they don’t know the latent demand, along with other 3G pitches that are being forecast to be built and planned for the same area, then they might not be able to raise enough money per month to pay the loan off. Again, this is where the FA can help.

Making big decisions in the best interests of a football club isn’t straightforward. That’s why we’re here to help and we are formulating local investment plans for every local authority in the country over the next 18 months which will identify where there is demand for 3G and natural turf pitches, with the technical guidance to support clubs make the best decision.