Stadium director addresses concerns over pitch

AVIVA STADIUM:JOSEPH HELLER gave this sort of conundrum a title. The good folk of the Aviva Stadium want to host as many high-profile soccer and rugby matches as the calendar will permit in their shiny new stadium but this has clearly had a detrimental effect on the playing surface.

A Catch 22 scenario if ever there was one.

When a world football figure like Uruguay captain Diego Forlan criticised the pitch on Monday (“It’s not the best pitch because there have been so many games, including rugby.”) it became necessary to make further inquiries.

Everyone present or watching last night’s match on television could see the pitch has been cut to ribbons. Concerns are heightened considering the Aviva hosts the Europa League final on May 18th – an event that will showcase the venue on a global scale.

“It didn’t present well at all at the weekend, we acknowledge that,” stadium director Martin Murphy admitted yesterday. “I think the main point from our perspective was to ensure the pitch was stable, playable and okay in that it didn’t impact on the match and that was achieved.

“Our main aim is to ensure that it recovers and we have a top-class pitch for the Europa League final and there is no doubt that will be the case.”

What needs to be done to ensure this is achieved by May 18th? Or more importantly, how did the pitch deteriorate in the first place? It was that dastardly winter that prevented the essential grass growth. Murphy’s confidence is based around the natural light of spring solving the problem.

“We knew there was a high risk of this happening,” he continued. “We’ve had 20 matches since we started playing in July so there has been a lot of activity on the pitch back as far as November when there were six matches in 21 days. In fact, there were four matches in a week. We had Samoa on a Saturday, the FAI Cup final on Sunday, a (soccer) international on the Tuesday (against Norway) and the All Blacks the following Saturday. It was a very intense period and the ground staff were unable to get on the pitch. The weather was really against us in December and January.

“For the Argentina match (last weekend in November) it was the only playable pitch in the country. We had to take the snow off it. We had a lot of snow after that as well. Nature will actually do the work for us now because we get natural growth from the middle of March which will be a huge help. We can actually see it improving on a daily basis now.”

The fibre sand pitch is facing a cover issue regarding the growth of its Dwarf Rye grass. Natural light cannot come through glass as the UV is absorbed out of it.

Also, grass doesn’t grow well in a hostile environment and a high-walled sports stadium is such an environment.

“We always get light at some stage in the day on the pitch. The southern end, which is the highest end, is the one that is most affected and we’ve invested in grow lights and they are deployed on a daily basis. If there is frost, we have underground heating.” The result is a utility bill to the tune of €1,000 a day.

“When you are looking at it from a height it appears much worse than it actually is when you are down at ground level.

“The main difficulty we have is it is such a young pitch,” Murphy explained about the shallow grass roots. “It is just a year old. It doesn’t have the consolidated roots that a pitch that was there a couple of years but it is strengthening with every week.”

Agronomist Richard Hayden and Ian McClement from the Sports Turf Research Institute are in daily contact with Murphy and ground staff Majella Smith and Stuart Wilson. The institute also worked with Croke Park when that surface underwent some issues in the past few years.

“There is a detailed scheme of work laid out for the pitch for the next couple of weeks. It involves over seeding and the deployment of lighting rigs and also detail about the height of the cut and how regular it needs to be cut.”

A more basic concern with preparation for the Europa League final is having to follow rugby games on the pitch. Leinster play the Leicester Tigers at the stadium on Saturday, April 9th and two Heineken Cup semi-finals may also go there over the weekend of April 30th/May 1st should Leinster and Ulster progress.

“Definitely scrums take their toll but we were happy with the way it played against England and how the ball rolled. Rugby needs a good surface, football obviously needs a better surface,” Murphy added.