Magazine - Professional Footballers Australia Stadiums Rankings

2 Mar 2010 by Peter Bass

I read this year that Westpac had the best surface on foot. And the few games i watched on TV i'm surprised it isn't a little higher.

You Can't Handle The Truth. Bass atYa

4 Mar 2010 by pl.cronin@bigpond.com

First well done to Mal Caddies.He and his team deserve the award based on what the players assn have voted.

However Schwab's comments "that We often hear that maintaining the quality of the playing surface is difficult in multi-use venues. However, (Suncorp groundsman Mal Caddies') team has demonstrated that this does not have to be the case." is very misleading and not fair to those grounds staff that are really multiuse stadiums with lots of other events.

First- Suncorp does not allow training like the other stadiums,
Second- they have not had a concert on the ground like Etihad, this year! what would have the results been if say ACDC went to them before a game?
Third -interesting that Parramatta stadium scored all 5s for the 4 criteria but got no award?

They also do not have supa cross or crusty demons like SFS, Skilled Park,Dairy farmers or Newcastle,WIN grounds.

And finally the AWAY teams get to vote only. Bear this in mind for a moment!- How many home games did the ROAR win? 1 or 2?? .So if you are the winning AWAY capt and you are asked if there were issues? 9 times out of ten you will say no every thing is great!! Obviously this will go against grounds like Wellington,SFS and say , Melbourne and others whose teams won more home games.

As for hardness and pace of the pitch ?,What form of measurement are they using? Clegg, penetrometer or the "foot stomp" test.
The really true multi use stadiums are those that have a greater variety and cop lots of training or have multiple teams. You have to feel for the guys at Etihad ,who despite spending big money on lights that do work, they got hammered by events other than football, that no matter what you do, the turf will suffer.

The system should allow for the stadium to drop out two games from the list. That is best score and worst score . This may even things out more, especially those that have been hammered by training, wet weather abuse or other events.

Those stadiums that have had a bad run can then catch up.

It was noted that the scores did not change from round 9 to round 18 and to the final round even though some stadiums had really lifted their game. SFS and Skilled Park were two that come to mind after watching FOX, who had a bad start but the grounds were noted to have improved considerably as stated by FOX commentry over the midlle to end rounds.

The other point is that the Dutch scoring system relates to MAIN STADIUM football pitches only. The Dutch stadiums do not allow training on the Main stadium they have a number of training venues. All this counts as they do not have the same amount of "games" time use on their fields compared to Australian fields. Interesting also they do not have two types of turf(couch overseeded with rye in Aust) compared to 3 rye varieties in Holland. or a transition period. At the end of the season they get 8-12 weeks depending on where the team finished for renovations. try that at SFS?

If the players assn wants to have a rating system , all very well, but design it on Aust conditions /useage and use proper measurements for testing, not some light weight captain's leg as a stomp machine for testing hardness or kicking a ball a few metres to a team mate at warm up.

food for thought?

5 Mar 2010 by suncorp

Turfwars
i cannot agree with some of the comments
Suncorp is a multi use stadium in fact all stadiums are multi use these days. Whilst it may be true that suncorp did not have a concert they still have 3 codes of football.
As for training - Suncorp must have some?maybe it has less than others? who knows .

you obviously know about the system of how it is done
Interesting that you have mention Skilled Park
As the groundsmanager there I know that we did not have crusty demons this year but we have had a lot of other events and training which you seemed to be aware of. However we cannot claim that this could or would have influenced any results. as for scores I could not obtain them nor any information from the FFA/ as this was not available as it is done by the players.
Your comments on other stadiums in Europe suggest that you are familiar with the process there.It must mean you have contact with FFA, follow soccer or have some assn with the industry?

as for the comments on hardness etc , maybe the PA could look at this ?but who is going to do it. as it stands the current method has been adapted.

i do agree with your suggestion of dropping best and worst score but under what circumstances is this done. for example-

if Suncorp or any other stadium has a concert next year out of the football season and has issues later , is the score allowed to be adjusted?

regardless of what grass is used we still have to manage it so that comment does not rate

Therefore I congratulate Mal onhis award and best luck for the year ahead

Eddie Albert- Skilled Park groundsmanager

5 Mar 2010 by pl.cronin@bigpond.com

What I was attempting to say Eddie, and you know we have discussed this many times regarding stadiums here and what transpires overseas, is that some stadiums will always be at a disadvantage compared to others based on the attitude of those that make the decisions.
Your ground had lots more training compared to Suncorp which had adverse affects on the surface compared to other venues that did not. It is not that Suncorp does not have multi use, but compared to say ANZ? Really there is no comparison. The same applies to other stadiums with high training usage. In reality, compared to Etihad, one cannot dismiss that fact that the concert plus earlier comments on the surface from events did not impact on the scores.
My comment relating to dropping scores is based on the point that if the scores were placed with Etihad after the concert they would have scored a low rating, so if stadiums could drop the lowest score as well as the highest this would even things out.
As for hardness etc, we both know that better testing methods should be used and there are organisations in Australia that can do this. I have watched a few games were it was impossible to determine how smooth the pitch was so how do players do it? It is also well known based on the PFA web that the away team captains rate the pitch. So let’s be fairdinkum here, are you really going to complain if you win?
What I was attempting to engage was the PFA or whoever does this should look at both captains not just the away team as if a team loses every home game that stadium potentially could get unrealistic scores
The blog was not meant to offend Suncorp or anybody else just to highlight some interesting points that need to be look at if all stadiums are to be given an equal footing.