Cover Story
Into The
Light
Managing Sunderland’s Premier League Football Pitch
By Jay McCurdy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University
On
recent travels to visit my wife’s family, I got an inside look at one of England’s Premier League football pitches — Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. Head groundsman, Adrian Partridge, and I discussed compaction, surface quality and managing to Premier League standards at the home of Sunderland Association Football Club. The Stadium of Light opened in 1997 on the former site of Wearmouth Colliery, one of the most important coalmines in northeast England. In fact, if you’ve ever heard the idiom “It’s like taking coals to Newcastle,” you’ll appreciate the fact that Newcastle and Sunderland, less than 15 miles to its south, were once heaving with coal pits, 12 • Mississippi Turfgrass • Fall 2015
as well as the rail and ship-building industries responsible for transporting their bounties throughout England and around the world. Football clubs like Sunderland’s were once comprised of local, blue-collar talent, recruited from the local mines, shipyards, police forces and teachers’ unions. Thus, a sense of community is one of the most charming aspects of Premier League football, as long as you’re not a visiting fan. American field managers would find the 100% perennial ryegrass pitch to be strangely welcoming. The grounds are not unlike most college and professional fields. There are locker rooms for changing, showers and physio rooms for players recovering from the match. There’s even an interview room with
sponsor logos spread methodically so that no matter the camera angle, or size of the player’s ego, each can be seen by viewers at home or in the pub. There are also considerable differences between America’s NFL stadiums and those of the English Premier League (EPL). American football fans would be surprised that attendees must stay seated during the match. This was a recommendation stemming from findings after the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, in which 96 Liverpool fans died as a result of being crushed by overcrowding during the 1989 FA cup semi-final match against Nottingham Forest. Because of this, there is no open standing area to congregate at the tops of stairs, thus influencing the structural