MATTHEW LINDSAY
Time to embrace artificial pitches . . .
B ILL Hicks, the late, great American stand-up comedian, had a famous routine about the lawsuit which was once taken out against Judas Priest, the English heavy metal band.
The rock group was sued by the parents of a suicide victim who alleged the song Better By You, Better Than Me contained “subliminal messages” which had driven their son to take his own life.
The case was dismissed by the judge following a brief trial. But the absurdity of the plaintiffs’ claim tickled Hicks. “I may be naive, but what performer wants his audience dead?” he asked.
The sketch sprang to mind last week as the complaints about the use of artificial surfaces in Scottish football intensified and calls for them to be banned increased. Bear with me here.
Rob Kiernan, the Rangers centrehalf, urged the SPFL to follow the lead of their Football League counterparts in England and do away with plastic pitches before his side’s Scottish Cup replay with Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.
Kiernan’s sentiments were echoed by his manager Mark Warburton after Martyn Waghorn sustained an injury which is set to keep him out for at least six weeks and which was attributed directly to playing on astroturf.
Theirs are not the only dissenting voices to be heard of late. Earlier this month Fraser Wishart, the chief executive of PFA Scotland, called for safeguards to be put in place to ensure synthetic surfaces are of a high standard. It was a valid appeal.
Yet, all of this carping about an innovation which is becoming increasingly prevalent in this country – currently no fewer than 12 of our 42 senior sides, more than a quarter, play on them – begs a question. What football club wants its own players injured?
The financial benefits of installing artificial pitches are obvious. For clubs struggling to break even in a difficult economic climate they cost far less to maintain and are less susceptible to adverse weather conditions. Indeed, the Kilmarnock game against Rangers wouldn’t have gone ahead on grass due to the torrential downpour the tie was played out in.
But it is ridiculous to suggest that a club would jeopardise the wellbeing of its squad and those of opposing teams simply to save itself a few bob. The ultimate objective of any team is on-field success. That has significant commercial benefits. To achieve that you need all of your best players available. Anything that threatens their fitness would be avoided.
To declare that astroturf is dangerous is spurious nonsense. If they are so damaging to footballers then why do many of the major clubs in this and other countries have them installed, both inside and outdoors, at their training complexes and make use of them regularly?
Hamilton have held their own against clubs with far larger budgets in the Premiership for the last two seasons despite playing on 3G at New Douglas Park. As far as I am aware, they have suffered no fatalities in that time. What is more, they have often produced highly attractive fare. Their 3-2 win over Hearts back in August is one of the best games I have seen this season.
As this debate rumbled on last week, a colleague cast his mind back to the Rangers game against Cowdenbeath at Central Park towards the end of last season. The Championship match was played out in driving rain and howling wind on a pitch that can best described as a quagmire.
A dire encounter finished 0-0. It was comfortably the worst game of football many of those with the misfortune to be in attendance had witnessed for some time. Would it have been so appalling on an artificial surface? No, it would almost certainly have been far better.
By all accounts, the St Johnstone game against Motherwell at McDiarmid Park on Saturday was a similar affair. A player is just as likely to suffer an injury, possibly more so, on that sort of rutted grass pitch. It is no wonder the Perth club is now considering following the lead of Hamilton, Kilmarnock, Falkirk and others.
We constantly search for reasons for the lack of technical ability in our leading players. Perhaps giving them better platforms to develop their skills on would help. It would certainly be far fairer than demanding they produce a tiki-taka passing game redolent of Barcelona in a mudbath during a hurricane.
The very public criticism of plastic pitches has done nothing to dispel the image of Scotland as a footballing backwater due to our widespread reliance on them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Clubs here should be applauded, not castigated, for using them.
The Football League clubs voted on whether to reintroduce them in 2014. There were 34 clubs in favour, 34 against and four abstentions and the motion failed. In time, though, they will be brought back in England.
To ignore their myriad advantages for any longer would be an absolute joke.
TOMORROW Nick Rodger
It would be far fairer than demanding players produce a tiki-taka passing game redolent of Barca in a mudbath during a hurricane . . .