3G or not 3G?

Back in 1970, Terry Venables co-wrote (with Gordon Williams), a novel about a fictional football team competing in the equally fictitious British Cup, entitled “They Used To Play On Grass”, so titled because in the time the story was set, grass pitches had largely been replaced by artificial surfaces. In 1981 and then managed by Venables, Queens Park Rangers, in an example of life imitating art, installed an Omniturf pitch. They were followed by Luton Town, Oldham Athletic and Preston North End who similarly installed artificial surfaces. The plastic pitch at QPR’s Loftus Road ground lasted until 1988, Preston North End eventually reverted to grass in 1994 after eight years of watching the ball bounce thirty feet in the air and treating countless players for friction burns.

In his excellent book, The Smell of Football, Mick Rathbone recalls his time as a player at Preston and of playing on the plastic, writing that “Sometimes, before a game in winter, they would sprinkle a salt solution onto the surface to prevent it from freezing. This was an astonishing breakthrough for medicine as you could slide-tackle, get a friction burn and have it cleaned all at the same time.” He also remembers having to peel the sheets off his burns the morning after a match; not a ringing endorsement of the surfaces available at that time.

Plastic at Preston North End's Deepdale home.

The bounce and the incidence of carpet burns were without doubt the two major defects in early artificial surfaces. I saw QPR entertain Orient on the Loftus Road plastic and spent an inordinate amount of time with my head tilted at an unusual angle as the ball pinged off the pitch and into the upper atmosphere. That game was also remarkable for a spectacular graze suffered by Orient defender Nigel Gray after an ill-advised sliding tackle.

The technology available to develop artificial surfaces in the eighties and nineties frankly was not good enough, hence the decision of QPR etc to revert to grass. An FA ban on the introduction of new artificial pitches in 1988 meant that their days were numbered anyway. Nowadays the technology has improved to the state that artificial surfaces are much more like grass. I was watching a clip on You Tube of a game from Scandinavia some time ago and it was several minutes before it dawned on me that the pitch was not grass.

Aspmyra, Norway: home of the football club FK Bodø/Glimt photo Lars Røed Hansen

In Scotland, Airdrie, Annan, Stenhousemuir, Montrose, Alloa, Stranraer, East Fife and Clyde all have artificial pitches and in England there are a number of clubs in non-League football who have installed such pitches, most notably being Maidstone United, promoted from Ryman Division One South to the Ryman Premier Division at the end of last season. Now Essex club Harlow Town have installed a 3G pitch. Considering that the grass surface at Barrows Farm was one of the best in the division, one could ask why they would do so and I suppose that the answer would be that a 3G surface almost guarantees no postponements and can be used virtually 24/7, giving the club a significant new income stream as the pitch can be hired out without risk of it being damaged.

The past disadvantages of plastic caused by quality appear to have been addressed; the limitations now are based on how far up the football pyramid in England a club can progress and still use an artificial surface. These types of pitches have been sanctioned for use in the FA Cup, but only in the qualifying rounds and similar restrictions exist as to how far up the pyramid a club can be promoted and still retain their artificial pitch. Maidstone and Harlow will doubtless be looking at how the administrators view matters in the near future. I do find it strange however, that artificial surfaces in Russia have been used for World Cup qualifying and Champions League games and are used in Switzerland and Italy, yet in England these surfaces are limited to the game below the Football League. As ever, the wheels of change grind exceedingly slow.

Saracens RFC have installed a 3G surface at Allianz Park recently and this suggests that the technology behind these pitches has improved exponentially in recent years. Rugby is at first sight, a  game far less suited to such a surface than association football.

Until a few days ago I would have said that I would prefer to see football played on grass, but this  prejudice was based purely on the one game I watched played on plastic and my one (painful) experience of playing on it. On that occasion I received some lovely friction burns from wrist to elbow on both arms (I was playing in goal) and due to my lack of inches, was in constant fear of the ball bouncing embarrassingly over my head. Fortunately this did not happen; I just found other ways of embarrassing myself, viz the shot that I confidently expected to go wide but which instead crept narrowly inside the post. My only consolation was that it was struck by probably the best player on the pitch; "He bent that really well; I had no chance," I explained afterwards.

As I said, 3G pitches are becoming increasingly prevalent in non-League football and on Tuesday I had the opportunity to see for myself as Romford visited Harlow Town for a Ryman League fixture. The first thing that you notice is that really, from the sidelines, there doesn't appear to be much difference between the 3G surface and a normal, grass pitch except that the green of the "grass" is more vivid and more consistent and that the white lines stand out so much more.  The only other thing that looks any different are the corner flags, which are help in metal stands rather than being embedded in the ground.  The bounce, which was one thing that potentially may have been an issue, is much more natural and normal than on the old pitches, a la QPR; no evidence of players being surprised by a ball bouncing over their heads in this game (well, no more than on any other pitch).

The 3G pitch at Harlow Town's ground.

If there is one thing that differentiates the 3G pitch, it really is in the ball's momentum. You get the impression that a side footed pass, struck with average pace, would run from one touchline to the other without stopping if no one got in the way: whereas grass will retard the ball's progress eventually, there is definitely less friction on a 3G pitch. As a result the pass ahead or one side of a player has to weighted perfectly to avoid the ball running away from the target. A good first touch and "soft" feet are important; overall the surface favours the skilled player, as you might expect.

A question many people will be asking is, does a 3G pitch give the home team an unfair advantage? Heybridge Swifts manager Mark Hawkes seems to think so; in advance of his side's FA Cup tie at Harlow on Saturday he has expressed disappointment at the advantage that he feels the pitch gives the home side. After Tuesday's game I'm not sure I would agree; yes the pitch is different, but given the wide variety of quality of playing surfaces in non-League football, I'm sure that 3G is preferable to a rutted, muddy, uneven grass pitch.

3G is, in my view, the way forward: I can see more and more clubs switching to this surface in the future, and certainly for new stadium builds the case for 3G is stronger than for grass. The interesting test of 3G will be the day that a club playing on 3G reaches the point where promotion to the Football League is a possibility, or indeed the day an existing Football League club proposes installing an artificial surface; and that day will come, sooner or later. Despite the natural aversion to change, one day the artificial surface must become more widely accepted now that the technology has advanced so much from the days when QPR, Luton Town etc were using it.

Probably the biggest compliment that I can pay to the surface is that after the initial novelty had worn off, it was easy to forget that the game I saw on Tuesday wasn't being played on grass. The more commonplace these surfaces become, the less fuss anyone will make about them.

I cannot resist closing without a quote attributed to, among others, gridiron footballer Joe Namath. When asked whether he preferred grass or Astroturf, Namath replied that he didn’t know as he had never smoked Astroturf! The more observant among you may recall this being recycled as joke in an episode of Only Fools And Horses.

This piece is adapted from an article that I wrote for the Romford v. Waltham Abbey match programme in August 2013.