Artificial pitch vote

[TPAFKA Jersey 2]

One other point worth mentioning in relation to Killie and Livi moving to plastic is that Livi's grass pitch was absolutely horrendous. As bad as their plastic pitch is, it is significantly better than their grass one. A Livi fan might be able to confirm, but I'm sure I read somewhere that there is something about the positioning of Almondvale that makes it almost impossible to maintain a decent grass pitch.

[Moorie]

Not real opinion on them. Makes sense down the food chain to have one. Especially when there is extra income to be made to hire them out.

must be a rule they have to be the best of the best though. The Aberdeen Sports Village 3G surface my son trains on looks better than some the leagues ones 

[Disco Duck]

13 minutes ago, Moorie said:

Not real opinion on them. Makes sense down the food chain to have one. Especially when there is extra income to be made to hire them out.

must be a rule they have to be the best of the best though. The Aberdeen Sports Village 3G surface my son trains on looks better than some the leagues ones 

There are minimum standards.  And “looks better” has nothing to do with it.

ill ask again - can someone explain what makes a grass pitch better than an artificial surface?  I don’t even mean to the extent that it justifies pulling up the drawbridge yet again, I just mean why would you choose grass over plastic?

[The Wrong Car]

21 minutes ago, TPAFKA Jersey 2 said:

One other point worth mentioning in relation to Killie and Livi moving to plastic is that Livi's grass pitch was absolutely horrendous. As bad as their plastic pitch is, it is significantly better than their grass one. A Livi fan might be able to confirm, but I'm sure I read somewhere that there is something about the positioning of Almondvale that makes it almost impossible to maintain a decent grass pitch.

There's a corner of the pitch that, due to the position of the stand, never gets sunlight. It's also build at the bottom of a hill and next to a river, which doesn't help with drainage.

[CrispyMelon]

Not sure it’s been mentioned but 16 out of the 30 SPFL clubs below the premiership play on an artificial pitch. I don’t see the benefit of further inhibiting any of these sides from one day working their way to the top flight.

You can’t complain about the same teams always coming up and down from the premiership and then want to make it harder for others to do so by burdening them with this additional cost.

[Disco Duck]

3 minutes ago, CrispyMelon said:

Not sure it’s been mentioned but 16 out of the 30 SPFL clubs below the premiership play on an artificial pitch. I don’t see the benefit of further inhibiting any of these sides from one day working their way to the top flight.

You can’t complain about the same teams always coming up and down from the premiership and then want to make it harder for others to do so by burdening them with this additional cost.

If they can they will…

[Kyle Reese]

5 hours ago, chris1883 said:

Rovers were playing Partick last night. I would encourage everyone advocating for the synthetic pitch ban to go and have a look at the Firhill surface (grass) and compare it to Starks Park (synthetic). Rovers' pitch is far superior. The ball bounces with consistency and runs true at Starks', it certainly did not at Firhill.

It would make a huge amount of sense to me, if prior to the vote the club chairmen, club managers and club captains visit a few ground to see the realities of Scottish Synthetic and Grass surfaces. I worry that they are going to vote based on reasoning's other than the realities of what's out there.

The managers and captains will be well aware of the quality.

[Eddie Hitler]

34 minutes ago, The Wrong Car said:

There's a corner of the pitch that, due to the position of the stand, never gets sunlight. It's also build at the bottom of a hill and next to a river, which doesn't help with drainage.

Yeah and did no-one think of any of this in the planning stage the bally thing was being built?

Should they not have found a better site?

This is a thing entirely of Livingston's own making which apparently has to become everyone else's problem, alongside the notion that all the other clubs are supposed to care about Livingston maximising revenue.

[Kyle Reese]

39 minutes ago, Disco Duck said:

There are minimum standards.  And “looks better” has nothing to do with it.

ill ask again - can someone explain what makes a grass pitch better than an artificial surface?  I don’t even mean to the extent that it justifies pulling up the drawbridge yet again, I just mean why would you choose grass over plastic?

I do not have the data, sorry. I also do not have the data about whether galvanised rubber would be any worse than grass though, or clay… 

[Kyle Reese]

1 minute ago, Eddie Hitler said:

Yeah and did no-one think of any of this in the planning stage the bally thing was being built?

Should they not have found a better site?

This is a thing entirely of Livingston's own making which apparently has to become everyone else's problem, alongside the notion that all the other clubs are supposed to care about Livingston maximising revenue.

Someone had to say it. 

[Eddie Hitler]

24 minutes ago, CrispyMelon said:

Not sure it’s been mentioned but 16 out of the 30 SPFL clubs below the premiership play on an artificial pitch. I don’t see the benefit of further inhibiting any of these sides from one day working their way to the top flight.

You can’t complain about the same teams always coming up and down from the premiership and then want to make it harder for others to do so by burdening them with this additional cost.

Where's the unfair disadvantge if all clubs have to do it? It shouldn't inhibit any club more than another and, anyway, it isn't like Elgin have ever shown any interest in being promoted to anywhere.

[LIVIFOREVER]

20 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

Where's the unfair disadvantge if all clubs have to do it? It shouldn't inhibit any club more than another and, anyway, it isn't like Elgin have ever shown any interest in being promoted to anywhere.

So much nonsense in the one sentence.

[LIVIFOREVER]

25 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

Yeah and did no-one think of any of this in the planning stage the bally thing was being built?

Should they not have found a better site?

This is a thing entirely of Livingston's own making which apparently has to become everyone else's problem, alongside the notion that all the other clubs are supposed to care about Livingston maximising revenue.

More nonsense from you, starting to think you post shite all the time.

There wasn't a stand blocking the sun in the planning stage, it was only after the 10,000 seater rule for the top flight that stand had to be built.  

[The Wrong Car]

1 hour ago, Eddie Hitler said:

This is a thing entirely of Livingston's own making which apparently has to become everyone else's problem, alongside the notion that all the other clubs are supposed to care about Livingston maximising revenue.

Well, no. It's entirely the making of the clubs pushing for the vote after years of accepting them throughout the SPFL. 

Plenty of clubs throughout the leagues play on plastic pitches of a varying standard. Changing all of these on the whim of armchair fans who don't like how it looks on TV, or managers like Brendan Rodgers who use it as a ready made excuse for poor results seems rash.

1 hour ago, Eddie Hitler said:

 It shouldn't inhibit any club more than another

In what way? It'll clearly impact a number of clubs massively over a short period of time.

I agree that the pitch at Livi is fairly poor most games, however the tactics used on it and the preparation it gets before games play a massive part in how they're perceived.

Edited March 13 by The Wrong Car

[LIVIFOREVER]

1 hour ago, TPAFKA Jersey 2 said:

One other point worth mentioning in relation to Killie and Livi moving to plastic is that Livi's grass pitch was absolutely horrendous. As bad as their plastic pitch is, it is significantly better than their grass one. A Livi fan might be able to confirm, but I'm sure I read somewhere that there is something about the positioning of Almondvale that makes it almost impossible to maintain a decent grass pitch.

We had a cracking grass pitch when we were first in the top flight, but it took money keeping it that way. Iirc the award winning groundsman we had went to Accies (pre plastic pitch). The pitch went to shit under Flynn's stewardship, then there was the Massone saga. It never really recovered after that and was always a bit of a mess, by the time we replaced it with a plastic pitch it was like a tattie field, cutting up something terrible. 

[LIVIFOREVER]

2 hours ago, chris1883 said:

I think that is the argument, and I think you backed it up by mentioning Power League pitches.

Look, I honestly believe grass is the future for all top leagues - it should be. But we need grass pitches of an appropriate standard. And that standard needs to exceed that of the local park. I remember games relatively recently where there has been more sand on 'professional' pitches than grass.

My comments regarding synthetic is wholly that not all synthetic surfaces are created equally (Livi's is a shocker!), and as a result informed decisions need to be made.

I suppose what I am trying to get across is that if they decide to go to grass, that grass needs to have specific standard that needs to be adhered to. Everything I am hearing at the moment is "grass is better than plastic" - it isn't. Good grass is better than most plastic. Average grass is not better than good synthetic.

It all comes down to money though, all very well Scotland trying to copy the English leagues, rebranding our leagues, introducing VAR, and now talking about the top flight having to be grass pitches only, but they have vast amounts of cash from their tv deal, and we get scraps compared to them, and then the erse cheeks take the lion's share of that. We just can't compete with England's top flight.

Btw i remember their pitches being like beaches in the Winter months, with sand poured all over them, before they got all that tv money.

[Eddie Hitler]

1 hour ago, LIVIFOREVER said:

More nonsense from you, starting to think you post shite all the time.

There wasn't a stand blocking the sun in the planning stage, it was only after the 10,000 seater rule for the top flight that stand had to be built.  

I see.

So when you became aware that changes were coming into force, you didn't then need to have a planning stage where someone would say "hang on a minute we might need to get this done differently...", it was fine just to steam in thoughtlessly because you could just moan about how it was everyone else's fault forever?

Also I fail to see how that caused the other issue of shite drainage that has been referred to. It wasn't the new rules that forced it to be built in a valley.

[GNU_Linux]

3 hours ago, CrispyMelon said:

Not sure it’s been mentioned but 16 out of the 30 SPFL clubs below the premiership play on an artificial pitch. I don’t see the benefit of further inhibiting any of these sides from one day working their way to the top flight.

You can’t complain about the same teams always coming up and down from the premiership and then want to make it harder for others to do so by burdening them with this additional cost.

That number is likely to increase in the next couple of season as both Bonnyrigg & Dumbarton have plans to install artificial turf down the line. Down at tier 5 the prospective winners of the HL Brechin are planning on switching (possibly this summer?) & runaway LL leaders EK already have such a surface.

[MazzyStar]

Is the vote legally binding? 

[Steve McQueen]

Do they have to be green, always looks fake & washed out. Lets get some different colours going.