The FA recently met with representatives of Sport & Play Construction Agency (SAPCA) to discuss artificial grass pitch construction and performance standards. The following information from SAPCA elaborates on these points:

Artificial Grass Pitch Construction & Performance

SAPCA are currently in the process of updating the Code of Practice for the Construction and Maintenance of Artificial Grass Pitches. They have been in discussion with several key sports governing bodies, covering football, rugby and hockey, which has provided many useful suggestions. There have consequently been quite a number of changes to the previous draft and the current (third) draft can be downloaded from the SAPCA website. Please click here to visit the site.

Third generation surfaces

Representatives of SAPCA recently met with colleagues from The FA and the Football Foundation to discuss a number of issues relating to the use of third generation (3G) artificial grass surfaces, particularly in projects which have been supported by The FA and funded by the Foundation.

The FA recently undertook a review of 30 artificial grass pitches, including the testing of the surfaces’ performance. This highlighted a number of issues, not least the difficulty of continuing to achieve the optimum playing performance where there is a high intensity of use and/or shortcomings in the quality of the routine surface maintenance carried out.

As interest in 3G surfaces has continued to grow, a number of non-league football clubs have expressed interest in the installation of artificial surfaces for their main stadia pitches. While The FA might like to support such projects, this would only be possible if they have sufficient confidence that any surfaces installed will be able to meet the required performance criteria over a long enough period to ensure that any such projects are financially viable, e.g. without replacement of the surface being necessary.

Having discussed the various key issues, The FA has invited the industry, through SAPCA, to review the situation and present proposals for how such confidence could be achieved.

This is likely to include a distinction between the criteria for pitches that are constructed for community use and those where higher levels of competitive play are required. SAPCA has agreed to study the subject and we have set up an initial working group to coordinate the work, which first met yesterday.

There is obviously a great deal of expertise and experience across the wider SAPCA membership, from which we would like to draw and we will be consulting all relevant members in due course. The working group consists primarily of the elected chairmen/vice-chairmen of the relevant groups of members, and each group will be invited to have input into the work in the near future. The project will be coordinated at SAPCA by Colin Young.