Turf Management - Football Pitches

Football Pitches

Historically football pitches have had natural grass cover. The stresses on a pitch, combined with winter weather can often mean that the pitch has to be returfed on a regular basis. Essentially the existing turf is removed to a depth of typically 40 mm turf and 110 mm of soil. The replacement turf is ideally purpose grown to ensure consistency and freedom from weeds. A pitch can usually be returfed within 4 days and would, typically involve removing and relaying 400 cubic metres of turf and soil. The FA recommends 4 main characteristics of a good grass pitch.

• Adequate grass coverage
• Low level of weeds
• Flat
• Good drainage

Football pitch technology has moved forward tremendously since the 70's/80's where it was found that by December most all pitches were turned mud baths. Today's technology includes the use of drainage pipe at 5m centres, a gravel raft, a sand (suspended water table rooting zone), undersoil heating and supplementary lighting on the surface that encourages growth. Management technique has also moved forward with more emphasis on soil and plant biology, morphology, zoology and physiology being introduced into the management of a grass sward. There are also a number of materials and methods to re-inforce a natural grass playing surface.

As stadiums have been developed, generally now 'near' sealed constructions, meaning less light and air movement on the playing surface, new processes and procedures have been introduced to counterbalance the effects of this.

Artificial grass offers an alternative to natural grass for football stadia. There has been considerable development of this type of surface from the early days when it was very similar to tufted carpet. The performance of this surface has generally been questioned as not being truly natural. However there are definite advantages with artificial grass, particularly when a stadia has heavy or multi use requirements. Also when the environment is hostile to natural grass, for instance low sunlight or a paucity of water.