A View from Afar

Ian Templeman

A debate surrounding the staging of a professional football match on an artificial surface is not a new subject to surface for discussion in footballing circles, but the issue was given an interesting airing a couple of weeks ago in the aftermath of the Dundalk v Derry City game at Oriel Park.

With the game having been held over to the Sunday after Joe Biden’s visit to Dundalk, the fact it was the only game on the day and involving two high profile teams might have led to a bit more focus and coverage than if it had been played on the usual Friday night. None the less, some of the after match comments certainly made for interesting reading, once Dundalk head coach Stephen O’Donnell had commented on the loss of two key players through injury by the end of the game, Andy Boyle being injured in the warm-up and Greg Sloggett having to be replaced.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, and subsequently quoted elsewhere, O'Donnell said that he felt the artificial surface at Dundalk was contributing to injuries in his squad. He also brought their opponents on the day Derry City into the conversation, observing that they have also had similar issues.

Picking out the key points from his interview. O’Donnell said: “They [Dundalk and Derry City] are the two teams with the most injuries and we know what the correlation is.

"It’s gone beyond probably a point of not a great surface to watch football on, it’s actually injuring players. Muscle injuries, there is no give on it. You go up for a header and if you don’t land square on the ball of your foot, you’re doing your ankle ligaments or doing your knee.

"I’m speculating, but all I know is we get a lorry load of injuries and Derry get a lot of injuries. I'd just be a bit worried about the injury count."

Up to fairly recently, I would say that the highlighted issues, and the main complaints, surrounding artificial pitches tended to be focussed on how the surface affected the game as a spectacle for supporters. I can’t recall any manager recently so clearly stating his concerns with regard to player safety and welfare as O’Donnell did, certainly not about his own home pitch.

The artificial pitch debate is something I have experience of at close quarters, through my involvement in non-league football over here in England. My club Daisy Hill, in the North West Counties League has a grass pitch, but 5 out of the 18 clubs in our league have artificial surfaces. We spend a fair amount of money getting a professional company every 1-2 weeks to carry out the main ground staff and maintenance work on the pitch, and that is supplemented by work from club volunteers in the aftermath of games.

One of the reasons for the hiring of a professional company is that our current manager likes to play a passing game of football, rather than long ball stuff, and having a good surface for home games is at the top of the list of his priorities. However, when we get into the depths of winter, the weather in the North West of England can be very rainy, aside of any frost or snow issues during a cold snap. That obviously has a major impact on grass pitches maintained by volunteers, so when the fixtures are published at the start of the season, our manager is always pleased when our scheduled away games on artificial surfaces are in the depths of the winter months.

He has told me several times that he actually enjoys preparing for those games, because he knows we can play our preferred style of passing football, and he can prepare knowing what the surface is going to be like – especially as the bulk of the club’s training sessions during the season are on artificial surfaces. The preparation is a different build up entirely to preparing for playing at a ground where you know from experience that the pitch is going to be heavy after a lot of rain, and would lead us down the road of having give up trying to pass the ball around on a mud bath and just knock long balls up to the strikers.

I noticed in the post-match hullabaloo about the Dundalk game that Cobh Ramblers manager Shane Keegan touched on that very point in talking to The42.ie on the subject, when he pointed out that the vast majority of training is on astro pitches, and the benefit is "you know what you're getting week on week, that's the other side of it."

However, you have to also accept that the view of a manager, whose team is playing a 90 minute competitive home game on an artificial pitch every other week, is likely to have a different angle on the merits of artificial surfaces in comparison to one whose team will only play on them a handful of times during the season.

I can’t claim to be an expert on the subject, as this season I have only watched my team Daisy Hill play on artificial surfaces six times in the season just ended over here, five time in the league and once in a cup competition, but my observation would be that the surfaces in question didn’t noticeably affect the quality of the game I watched. I’ve also asked our manager if he feels players might be adversely affected by playing on them could increase injuries, and he reckons not particularly, as they train largely on artificial surfaces, although only five or six times a season for a full 90 minutes does limit the risk somewhat.

Also, I am watching semi-professional football at the tenth tier of the English football pyramid, and comparisons between football at that level and at the top end of the League of Ireland are obviously not like-for-like. I do think that the general quality of artificial pitches is getting better, although maybe the slower pace of the game at the level I am watching may be a factor too, with fewer tackles and challenges at full pace.

But at the top level of professional football in any country, despite the commercial advantages of being able to use an artificial pitch far more frequently and in all weathers, we may be getting to the point where their use has to be at the very least more closely monitored. Neil O'Riordan in the Sun penned a column on the debate, calling on quotes from the likes of Stephen Kenny and Derry manager Ruaidhrí Higgins, where Kenny pointed to his Dundalk side’s superior record on the road while Higgins, in his post-match comments after Derry’s win in the FAI Cup final made reference to the Aviva Stadium pitch, and in an answer to a follow up question stated “if you’re asking me would I prefer a big grass pitch, the answer is yes”.

But Neil O’Riordan probably summed up the issue with artificial surfaces best at the end of his column when he wrote:

“For all the convenience and reliability they provide for a community club looking to cater for multiple teams, they are less welcome at the top end of the game, where they are blamed for an increased number of, in particular, ankle and knee injuries”.

And that is the point here. If the belief is that player welfare is being jeopardised by playing on artificial surfaces at professional level, that cannot be ignored and is going to become a bigger issue if more evidence emerges in time to support the claim. It’s an unenviable situation for Dundalk and Derry City to have to contend with, and an important point to note for any club considering a move from playing on good old fashioned grass.