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Rise of Astro Pitches


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I've never given it much thought before as it was the norm at the time but looking back it is fucking mental that that's the surface we played a lot of our football on. Some of them weren't too bad as they were fine gravel but some of them appeared to be laid with those red sharp chuckies you see on cheap driveways. If you lost the head and went in for a sliding tackle or fell on the pitch you were pulling stones out of your legs for days. They somehow also managed to get under the skin around your knees without their being any visible entry points. Our manager always insisted we wore boots and if you didn't have a pair of mouldys, your screw in studs were 'showing' after about three games. That's when refs would come into the dressing rooms pre-match and give every player's boots a thorough inspection for exposed metal as opposed to the cursory glance you see from officials. 

Great days. 

 

downloadfile.jpg.f99cbcbd30c6c7b4cecfab4ae9179f5d.jpg

 

I made a post in infowire asking about ash pitches. One junior club Glasgow Perthshire were using ash until the early 80's. Seemingly were somewhat common up until the 60s.

 

https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/applications/tapatalk/index.php?/topic/257001-Ash-pitches-in-Scotland

 

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2 minutes ago, GNU_Linux said:

 

I made a post in infowire asking about ash pitches. One junior club Glasgow Perthshire were using ash until the early 80's. Seemingly were somewhat common up until the 60s.

 

https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/applications/tapatalk/index.php?/topic/257001-Ash-pitches-in-Scotland

 

I was playing on them in the late 80's. Fields of grass with sections cut out to be used as ash pitches although it's understandable as they were all-weather and would have been quagmires throughout the winter months which wouldn't have been conducive to the silky, free-flowing football I used to encourage in my team-mates. 

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32 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

I've never given it much thought before as it was the norm at the time but looking back it is fucking mental that that's the surface we played a lot of our football on. Some of them weren't too bad as they were fine gravel but some of them appeared to be laid with those red sharp chuckies you see on cheap driveways. If you lost the head and went in for a sliding tackle or fell on the pitch you were pulling stones out of your legs for days. They somehow also managed to get under the skin around your knees without their being any visible entry points. Our manager always insisted we wore boots and if you didn't have a pair of mouldys, your screw in studs were 'showing' after about three games. That's when refs would come into the dressing rooms pre-match and give every player's boots a thorough inspection for exposed metal as opposed to the cursory glance you see from officials. 

Great days. 

 

downloadfile.jpg

They were less common down here, but there was one at a nearby Primary School that we sometimes trained and mucked about on.  

Matches were always played on grass though, so I was kind of startled to see the matches in Gregory's Girl played on the stuff.

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6 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

They were less common down here, but there was one at a nearby Primary School that we sometimes trained and mucked about on.  

Matches were always played on grass though, so I was kind of startled to see the matches in Gregory's Girl played on the stuff.

<<< Dee 'Man' Hepburn

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2 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

They were less common down here, but there was one at a nearby Primary School that we sometimes trained and mucked about on.  

Matches were always played on grass though, so I was kind of startled to see the matches in Gregory's Girl played on the stuff.

Played on ash parks in the school days 1998-2002. Good times.

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11 hours ago, andylivi1 said:

The best argument I’ve seen was the following...

”Yeh but Livi dug up a perfectly good grass pitch in the summer” from a guy who hadn’t seen a game at Livi for years. 

No, we dug up a pitch that was costing us a lot of money and causing us problem after problem, it was to put politely a bog from about late November onwards every season and certainly not “perfectly good” 

Your pitch was awful when we went there in the cup last January. 90 minutes of hoofball from both teams.

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16 hours ago, andylivi1 said:

The PFA statement is incredibly contradictory, they want artificial pitches banned from the top flight but improved in the lower leagues...

And what happens when lower league teams get promoted? Will this just be the 10k all seater rule in pitch form?

"Spend millions getting a grass pitch or yer no getting in"

15 hours ago, Romeo said:

World cup final on an artificial pitch then?

I'm fairly sure the Man U v Chelsea Champions League Final was played on an artificial surface, and some games at the last World Cup. The Luzhiniki has fake grass.

 

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On 23/11/2018 at 11:57, Romeo said:

The pitch they have now could never be described as astro. It is of course a very expensive hybrid pitch, superior to anything else in the league.

I don't think celtic's pitch looks to clever, despite having spent a fortune on it. 

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1 hour ago, Neil86 said:

I don't think celtic's pitch looks to clever, despite having spent a fortune on it. 

Excellent 1st post.

All players outside teams with fake grass pitches would rather play on a skanky looking grass pitch.

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Dominic Ball in today's Evening Express...

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Asked if artificial pitches should be banned in the top flight, Ball said: “That is why I signed the petition.

“The petition is hoping to do that (ban artificial pitches).

“I don’t mind them but my preference is grass pitches.

“I was brought up playing on them my whole life. But if you look at the Premier League in England every team has grass pitches.

“It reflects on Scottish football and grass pitches are the way to move forward.”

 

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/aberdeen-fc/donsnews/dons-defender-dom-ball-backs-ban-on-artificial-pitches/

So he actually doesn't mind artificial pitches and his reasoning seems to be purely "...cause in the English Premier League...".

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