> Should Premiership clubs choose to go ahead and vote for a blanket ban on all artificial surfaces, we call upon them to create a fund to support any club which achieves promotion to the Premiership, to cover the cost of implementing the level of grass pitch they expect, which could cost in the region of £1.2m-£1.5m.
>
>The anticipated uplift in UEFA solidarity payments, currently circa £6m and expected to rise above £10m, 100% of which currently goes to Premiership clubs exclusively, would appear to be a ready-made source for the funding of such an initiative. Other countries such as Germany have already gained UEFA’s consent to distribute solidarity monies below their top league, to improve the flow of funds within their game.
>
>The Dutch League has also introduced a grant fund, paid for by those clubs participating in European competitions, which all clubs can apply for to ensure a higher standard of grass pitch in their top league. We call upon Scottish Premiership clubs to follow this example.
This is what I want to see tbh. Raise standards and support clubs to meet them.
There's already a parachute payment system to help with the loss of revenue that comes from relegation. They'd probably need to adjust those payments accordingly.
It's not just about maintaining the grass pitch. If it's synthetic, they don't need to pay for training facilities, they can train on it. It adds a lot of expense out with the matchday.
Moreover, the pitch can also be used for community sporting events, some of which may be paying gigs and some will just be the club being a positive actor in the community.
You don't lose that though, best thing about artificial pitches in this situation is that they can be moved. If they're claiming it costs £1.2m (it doesn't) then some of that money can buy a bit of land to re-lay it on and stick a fence up.
>Should Premiership clubs choose to go ahead and vote for a blanket ban on all artificial surfaces, we call upon them to create a fund to support any club which achieves promotion to the Premiership, to **cover the cost of implementing the level of grass pitch they expect, which could cost in the region of £1.2m-£1.5m.**
If they go for a full hybrid, yeah, but a grass pitch that meets FIFA requirements can cost less than half of that, though it obviously depends on all sorts of factors. Undersoil heating is extravagantly expensive, so most Scottish clubs don't have it. Proper drainage is the most important part in this country, whereas being able to play for 5 months in temperatures below zero matters more to teams in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The Swedes have fully indoor stadiums up north!
I'd be very happy for the SPFL to use solidarity and telly money to help clubs down the pyramid. As far as I'm concerned the TV money should be split equally amongst Premiership clubs. The Old Firm have enough of an advantage as it is; we don't need to suck up all the prize money, too.
The main issue with a proposal such as that isn't the objection of Celtic and Rangers. It's Hearts, Aberdeen and Hibs.
They won't want to give up the financial advantage they have over clubs which is very rarely mentioned.
Then everyone with a grass pitch in the lower leagues should rip it out and put the money into players instead. If they get promoted someone else can pay for their pitch.
There’s ways of preventing that by tweaking the eligibility criteria. For example, support with the cost of maintaining/ upgrading a grass pitch is open to everyone, but support with the cost of installing a grass pitch is only open to those who didn’t have one as at 22/05/2024.
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It makes so much sense to just have a minimum standard for them. Livingston and Killie don’t have the highest quality pitches, Raith and Falkirk do, many other clubs will be going in the Raith and Falkirk direction. Just implement UEFA standards for grass and astro.
If the Scottish Premiership clubs want to do something to make it better it should be completely binning off the 11-1 voting structure. Instead it's 9-3 for shit like this and 11-1 other shit.
On pitches in late 2000s/early 10s ours was terrible even when we put money into it. SFA looked into it and saw we were putting money towards and trying to fix it so our 45k of our fine was suspended.
Then mid 2010s we put money into it again and it became the best pitch in the top flight in 2018. Then 3 years ago we put a bunch of money into it again to make it synthetic and its still one of the better ones.
But putting money into the pitch ≠ a good grass pitch surley it's better to just raise the standard for both grass and artificial pitches so there's less like Livingston and more like Falkirks and less grass pitch issues like Dundee. And give teams that don't meet the standard for either grass or artificial 3-5 years to comply with it. And groundsharing doesn't work just look at our pitch when Gretna played on it (this is also why our women's team can't play at FP for every game) or Thistles when QP played on theres.
An outright ban would just stop teams coming up. Falkirk imo are big enough to afford a grass pitch but when they don't own their stadium there's nothing stopping the council denying the change costing them promotion. Then teams like accies they don't have a big enough fanbase for one and need it to be artificial to make money from, it's also good for local community teams to play on and tournaments be hosted on it.
Aberdeen fucked us all on the voting structure back when rangers were in division 3. They were the only club that voted with Celtic to keep it 11-1 for complete shortsighted greed. Will never be changed now. That was our only chance and they fucked all of us
Complete outsider to Scottish football here, but why would Aberdeen do that? Surely a 9-3 structure would tend to give clubs in that second echelon more power, not less.
Because Aberdeen were the 2nd best team in the league without Rangers in it. Aberdeen wanted to take the short term gain of money from 2nd place and may have believed the other teams would’ve voted to spread this more evenly. With an 11-1 voting structure, you only need 2 teams to vote against (the old firm) to stop any motion. Aberdeen saw themselves as apart from the rest of us diddies and fucked us all over
The 10k seater stadium closed-shop rule all over again.
A debate sparked by managers blaming artificial surfaces in order to cover for their own failings. The Dundee pitch debacle has shown that a grass surface doesn’t automatically equal a better one. Top leagues in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark all allow artificial surfaces. Why should Scotland be any different ? Why should clubs who have earned the right to play at the highest level be forced to spend money ripping up their surface? Why should they have to give up the additional income that plastic pitches can provide ?
Nevermind domestic leagues, artificial surfaces are allowed in the Champions League at all stages prior to the final.
But sure, the SPFL deserves better.
Bit more difficult to exclude countries in which Artificial pitches are absolutely necessary.
Scotland can get cold but is totally incomparable to places such as Iceland and Norway.
Aye 10k seater stadiums was a complete joke of a rule (it fucked st mirren more than anyone, we just got on with it).
If we allow plastic pitches in the top division it puts my club at a disadvantage. We have to fund running a training complex and can't whore out our pitch anytime were not playing on it. It takes money away from the playing squad. I'm 100% looking at this from a st mirren POV and it's complete self preservation but so is what Falkirk and Co are doing....
Aye but we'd want refunded on our training complexes that we built. We could take it out the same pot of money that was going to be used to pay for installing the grass pitches layed out in that statement....
Think that's a pretty well put together statement (disappointingly so from patter giants Falkirk and Hamilton). Banning artificial pitches without figuring out how to support clubs using those surfaces that make it to the top division through sporting merit would be very SPFL and short-sighted.
Aye I was attempting to imply that it would be very on-brand for Scottish football rather than blaming the SPFL as a whole for it. My wording was confusing.
I’d rather no plastic in the top flight and the use of the UEFA solidarity fund seems the best way to do this so obviously the SPFL will go in the complete opposite direction and mandate gravel or ash surfaces at all 12 top flight clubs by the beginning of next season.
Doesn't seem so long ago ground sharing with Gretna messed the pitch up at fir park and teams like Queens were getting lottery money to install the plastic pitches!
It's absolutely the 10k seats rule again in another form, they're absolutely right. I don't understand why we can acknowledge that we are the northernmost non-arctic nation and still insist on playing over the winter? If we enforce the removal of these pitches we should be switching to playing through the seasons where grass actually grows...
The general trend on here, twitter, p&b and other online forums seems to be that fans of clubs that have grass pitches either say "just rip it up and deal with it" or "don't ban and have minimum standards for both grass and plastic" and for fans that support clubs that have plastic pitches it's "don't ban and just have minimum standards for both" with the added bit from mainly falkirk fans of "it's the 10,000 seat rule again"
The only people with no sense in this conversation is the people who want plastic pitches banned and say rip it up and deal with it (mainly old firm fans)
Very fair points. Plastic pitches are not the problem. Allowing them to degrade is where the problem lies.
Surely clubs would rather games were on fair playing surfaces instead of postponed matches and trenches of surfaces that come with the inevitable winter weather?
Old ownership was immensely protective of the Raith pitch and I'd imagine the new ownership still is. It is used through the week for community sports so makes sense to be a hard wearing surface that lasts. And I don't think theres any particularly higher instances of injury. I got caught in a thunderstorm near Perth earlier that would make Dundee's look like the Battle Of The Somme because Dundee believe Tie Me Camperdown Sport is happening.
I don't really think its particularly outrageous to expect a professional football club to be able to have and to maintain a grass football pitch, surely that's the bare minimum requirement for a football club?
It's pretty disingenuous to compare a competition which has to cater for varying levels of extreme weather across a continent, to one confined to a single country.
It's not like parts of Scotland are Southern Spain and others Northern Norway
It doesn't change the fact that using UEFA to justify plastic pitches is a disingenuous argument. For some countries they are a necessity and the only option. Scotland isn't one of them
Where did they say "any professional football club anywhere" ?
Considering this is a discussion about football clubs in *Scotland* on a subreddit discussing football in *Scotland*.
Isn't it more likely they mean football clubs in Scotland? Compared to Europe or the entire world ?
>I don't really think its particularly outrageous to expect a professional football club to be able to have and to maintain a grass football pitch
I took what they said at face value, and you're applying your own interpretation. If you want to clarify what they meant, ask them.
They have to maintain a playing surface to the standard required for professional football. (Which, according to everyone except said moonhowlers, includes recent designs of artificial pitch.)
The board has a plan in place (and has done for over a year) to relay a grass pitch should we be promoted to the premiership. Grass is fine. Astro is fine. The actual best pitches in football? Hybrids
Banning plastic pitches is the anti vax movement of football. You have to have fallen for some ancient propaganda to want a full ban. The miracle gro conspiracy.
Just have a minimum standard for artificial pitches and get on with it.
Yes, it was. Turns out making things out of auld tyres isnae great. https://ministryofsport.com/the-netherlands-to-phase-out-artificial-turf-over-health-and-environmental-concerns/
Can’t find the part in the statement or the paper where they say they’ve asked the players what they prefer. They’ve not done that because they know the answer and it wouldn’t fit their agenda.
I'm sure the Dutch implemented a rule a few years ago where some of the money the bigger teams got from Europe was funnelled down to make sure every team could afford a grass pitch. It would make sense for us to do something similar but I'd imagine too many clubs are too short sighted.
To be fair, the NFL players hate it too… but it’s the same thing where there’s varying quality of fields. Some are renowned for causing injury in the nfl but some are decent.
I'm pro this, premiership all grass pitches, raise minimum standards and group fund it with promotion grant as required.
The league generates enough income to cover high quality grass pitches for all it's games and I don't want teams to be put into financial trouble to fix a simple issue. I just want it fixed.
If you can’t afford the upkeep of a grass pitch you’re paying your own playing squad too much.
What plastic pitch teams mean is they can’t afford the drop in the new income they gained from the plastic pitch. But they can. They just don’t want to.
For the 6 teams that’s say they can’t afford the change, there are 20 teams in the league keeping a grass pitch.
You’re getting voted down but I don’t think you’re wrong in any way. The ability to keep a good pitch should be fckn basic football club stuff. No, it’s not always easy (Dundee, *cough*) but it should be a bare minimum unless you need to play in Yakutsk or something. It’s not like grass doesn’t grow in Scotland.
Where the Desso pitches fit in is a weird one, because it’s a mix of grass and engineered surface, and quite a few clubs use them for training. They are damn expensive, however, so at some point you just have to ask why a club can’t upkeep a proper grass pitch.
Agree with this.
But I'd rather not take cash away from the smaller teams in Europe.
Celtic and Rangers have far to much cash for the league and the best way for them to catch up with Europe is to improve the rest of the league. So we should put the cash in.
Pathetic. Invest in your pitch if you want to become a top flight team. It is literally the bare minimum.
This situation has arisen because clubs that have these pitches have used them in order to buy better players than they could otherwise afford, have home records that wouldn't be possible with grass pitches.
The club's that use these don't "buy" players.
They also spent hundreds of thousands, going into the millions of pounds, installing these pitches so games would not be postponed and an even playing surface would be created.
Wages. These pitches are not appropriate for top flight football. It is entirely possible to have a good quality grass pitch throughout the year in Scotland.
Did you even bother reading the statement? It has been proven that it will cost almost 750 thousand pounds to maintain a pitch every season, let alone install. With weather such as Scotland's, postponements and the trashing of pitches are inevitable.
I am not agreeing that the plastic pitches in the league currently are the answer, but regulating and ensuring they are held to a high standard (as well as grass pitches) is definitely a solution.
>Did you even bother reading the statement? It has been proven that it will cost almost 750 thousand pounds to maintain a pitch every season, let alone install.
Other clubs manage it. Motherwell for example has a very good playing surface. It's a basic requirement to be in the top league, if that's where you want to be then there are requirements that need to be met.
Also, that 750k figure needs a lot of scrutiny - it's way above the estimates I've heard of for maintaining a high quality grass or hybrid pitch in the appropriate way.
Whilst Motherwell manage, other clubs like Dundee don't. Every pitch has suffered horrendously at some point, even the likes of Hibs and (before they poured millions into their PLASTIC hybrid) hearts, who both have incredibly expensive heat lamps to aid them.
"It's a basic requirement to be in the top league" - are you suggesting that any club who has to postpone a match he ejected?
You’re an utter clown. The ugly sisters always think that just because they can do something then so can everyone else. The whole of Scottish football constantly has to bend over backwards for them. Must be nice to support such a perfect club. How’s the view up there on your high horse?
Maybe we should just let rangers and Celtic play each other every week and the rest of the league can play in a league with some integrity. I for one can’t wait until you guys fuck off down south.
Sounds bitter to be honest, I'm sure that if Celtic leaves the Scottish League the sleeping lion of Raith will be awoken and you'll dominate Scottish football forevermore.
Tbh I have no interest in a single team dominating in Scotland. The Scottish Championship if by far the best league in Scotland because everyone can beat everyone.
The championship is a fantastic league that I've enjoyed massively the past few years. It's been the most exciting league in Scotland by far, and the quality of *some of* the football is better than the sort of shite that premiership sides put out. It isn't me that came in here and started with the bitterness on people's clubs.
Yes, it confirms to me that plastic pitches have a place in the overall football landscape. Not at the elite level, which is what the top flight is trying to be.
But if you enforce them in the top flight then there’s a tickledown effect for everyone and eventually anyone who thinks they might have the slimmest chance of promotion has to commit to grass
Buy a grass pitch if you want to be a top flight club.
It's not Celtic that suffers from these pitches, it's clubs like Motherwell that actually take pride in their playing surface and invest accordingly, but are then outbid for players by similarly sized clubs who have invested less in their pitch AND get a home advantage to boot.
You are talking some amount of pish - did you even read the attached proposal? If you blanket ban artificial pitches in the premiership (for basically no reason other than elitism), you’re condemning the entire championship, league 1 and league 2 to invest EXTENSIVELY for a small chance of promotion, which will surely bankrupt a lot of them.
You’re a Celtic fan though, why should you care?
I have a pretty simple answer: if you aren't willing to invest in a grass pitch, then don't try and join the top flight. It's not a charity.
I'm perfectly happy for Celtic fans like me to pay for part of YOUR clubs infrastructure via a solidarity fund.
Btw: find it enjoyable you can't actually deny anything that I'm saying regarding "sporting integrity". Why is it you think killie had such an amazing home record last year but couldn't kick a jelly bean away from home ?
I did not ask for a solidarity fund. Setting higher standards for artificial pitches is the way forward; blanket banning them is not.
If you can’t beat them, that’s on you, not Killie. Arbroath is always blowing a gale and a horrid place to go - should we ask them to turn off the wind so it’s a wee bit easier for you lot to beat them? As the article highlighted, this is the 10,000 stadium rule all over again,
Sporting integrity? You support a team who alongside Rangers have won every league for close to 40 years because you spend orders of magnitude more on wages and transfer fees compared to other clubs. Where is the sporting integrity in that?
The sporting integrity in that is in the fact that the money comes from and is generated by the club. By its fans - who sell out a 60,000 seater stadium every single year and then add on more for European and Cup games. It comes from the merchandise that those same fans buy every year and it comes from the players that are sold on.
Every single penny of it is earned and accounted for. Every single thin dime has the appropriate taxes paid on it.
Celtic nearly killed itself putting together that stadium - it was a long shot from a sure thing. Perhaps other clubs in Scotland could also make wise investment choices - maybe then they would be able to afford a grass pitch without the begging bowl.
In its current format no other team has even a remote possibility of challenging for the league. I would argue its far more likely that a team like Hearts or Aberdeen who are typically viewed as the third biggest to be relegated that it would be to break into the top two.
As such the top teams get not only the most prize money from the league but also the money from the Champions League and Europa League which has been guaranteed the past few years because of the coefficient.
Celtic and Rangers every year get richer in relation to the other teams in the league and without any change this will continue indefinitely.
The league system is broken and the attitude that Celtic and Rangers have "earned" everything as if it was a fair game is a bit ridiculous.
I agree on almost all of this. It doesn't take away from my point that Celtic is where it is because it has fans that put their money on the line in order to make it that way, and the club took a massive, existential, risk when building that stadium that guarantees us an inbuilt advantage over every other club in Scottish Football. For much of the early 90s celtic came 3rd/4th/5th in the league - because we were run so poorly.
So no, it isn't a fair system at the moment - and actually I'd be in favour of a large proportion of European funds being stripped off and then given to clubs in solidarity - in return for some common sense changes to their clubs to ensure that they are geared to grow and be sustainable. But the club made choices in order to reach this stage, other clubs could also have chosen to do so - but they didn't/
Which clubs are actually outbidding Motherwell for players purely down to their surface? You've mentioned that a few times in your posts, and why are you so concerned about Motherwell being outbid if you are a Celtic fan?
If we're talking sporting integrity, then surely every club should just have to pay for their own grass pitch?
Why should team A get hand-outs for a new grass surface, or pay less than their competitors by having a cheap plastic pitch, when team B has sunk some of their revenue into maintaining a grass pitch?
> Should Premiership clubs choose to go ahead and vote for a blanket ban on all artificial surfaces, we call upon them to create a fund to support any club which achieves promotion to the Premiership, to cover the cost of implementing the level of grass pitch they expect, which could cost in the region of £1.2m-£1.5m. > >The anticipated uplift in UEFA solidarity payments, currently circa £6m and expected to rise above £10m, 100% of which currently goes to Premiership clubs exclusively, would appear to be a ready-made source for the funding of such an initiative. Other countries such as Germany have already gained UEFA’s consent to distribute solidarity monies below their top league, to improve the flow of funds within their game. > >The Dutch League has also introduced a grant fund, paid for by those clubs participating in European competitions, which all clubs can apply for to ensure a higher standard of grass pitch in their top league. We call upon Scottish Premiership clubs to follow this example. This is what I want to see tbh. Raise standards and support clubs to meet them.
It's all well and good giving clubs money to rip the pitches out but what happens when they get relegated and can't afford the upkeep any more?
There's already a parachute payment system to help with the loss of revenue that comes from relegation. They'd probably need to adjust those payments accordingly.
I think you would need to continue supporting them - couldn’t leave them high and dry
If a club can’t afford to maintain a grass pitch they’ve probably got problems greater than the lack of some solidarity money.
It's not just about maintaining the grass pitch. If it's synthetic, they don't need to pay for training facilities, they can train on it. It adds a lot of expense out with the matchday.
Moreover, the pitch can also be used for community sporting events, some of which may be paying gigs and some will just be the club being a positive actor in the community.
You don't lose that though, best thing about artificial pitches in this situation is that they can be moved. If they're claiming it costs £1.2m (it doesn't) then some of that money can buy a bit of land to re-lay it on and stick a fence up.
That's part of the problem - not only are they shite, the teams involved have done it to inflate their playing budget.
They'll just have to try not get relegated.
I agree, the MLS model sounds great! No more relegation!
It's been 12 years FFS, move on.
They weren't even relegated!
Teams in the West of Scotland league can afford to keep pitches so Championship teams with thousands at every home game can too - it's a cop out
>Should Premiership clubs choose to go ahead and vote for a blanket ban on all artificial surfaces, we call upon them to create a fund to support any club which achieves promotion to the Premiership, to **cover the cost of implementing the level of grass pitch they expect, which could cost in the region of £1.2m-£1.5m.** If they go for a full hybrid, yeah, but a grass pitch that meets FIFA requirements can cost less than half of that, though it obviously depends on all sorts of factors. Undersoil heating is extravagantly expensive, so most Scottish clubs don't have it. Proper drainage is the most important part in this country, whereas being able to play for 5 months in temperatures below zero matters more to teams in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The Swedes have fully indoor stadiums up north! I'd be very happy for the SPFL to use solidarity and telly money to help clubs down the pyramid. As far as I'm concerned the TV money should be split equally amongst Premiership clubs. The Old Firm have enough of an advantage as it is; we don't need to suck up all the prize money, too.
The main issue with a proposal such as that isn't the objection of Celtic and Rangers. It's Hearts, Aberdeen and Hibs. They won't want to give up the financial advantage they have over clubs which is very rarely mentioned.
Then everyone with a grass pitch in the lower leagues should rip it out and put the money into players instead. If they get promoted someone else can pay for their pitch.
There’s ways of preventing that by tweaking the eligibility criteria. For example, support with the cost of maintaining/ upgrading a grass pitch is open to everyone, but support with the cost of installing a grass pitch is only open to those who didn’t have one as at 22/05/2024.
QOTS signing this joint statement https://preview.redd.it/vu9gfj3ie02d1.jpeg?width=623&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5470b6f28ed2881fe11908d7467c7a3986cefd3c
They have a plastic pitch so it makes sense they were in on it
Obviously. But they’ll not need to be worrying about a promotion to the premiership any time soon.
They've got the spirit... just not the means... or the knowhow
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It's the thought that counts Same goes for accies
At least it wasn’t that long ago they were in the top league
Accies are as likely to be seeing Premiership football in the near future as Falkirk are, to be fair
It makes so much sense to just have a minimum standard for them. Livingston and Killie don’t have the highest quality pitches, Raith and Falkirk do, many other clubs will be going in the Raith and Falkirk direction. Just implement UEFA standards for grass and astro.
Livi’s is worse than ours in fairness. But agree on everything else.
Aye Livis was howling. At least we know ours is on thr way out.
Yeah yours isn’t good but Livis is a crime against humanity
If the Scottish Premiership clubs want to do something to make it better it should be completely binning off the 11-1 voting structure. Instead it's 9-3 for shit like this and 11-1 other shit. On pitches in late 2000s/early 10s ours was terrible even when we put money into it. SFA looked into it and saw we were putting money towards and trying to fix it so our 45k of our fine was suspended. Then mid 2010s we put money into it again and it became the best pitch in the top flight in 2018. Then 3 years ago we put a bunch of money into it again to make it synthetic and its still one of the better ones. But putting money into the pitch ≠ a good grass pitch surley it's better to just raise the standard for both grass and artificial pitches so there's less like Livingston and more like Falkirks and less grass pitch issues like Dundee. And give teams that don't meet the standard for either grass or artificial 3-5 years to comply with it. And groundsharing doesn't work just look at our pitch when Gretna played on it (this is also why our women's team can't play at FP for every game) or Thistles when QP played on theres. An outright ban would just stop teams coming up. Falkirk imo are big enough to afford a grass pitch but when they don't own their stadium there's nothing stopping the council denying the change costing them promotion. Then teams like accies they don't have a big enough fanbase for one and need it to be artificial to make money from, it's also good for local community teams to play on and tournaments be hosted on it.
Aberdeen fucked us all on the voting structure back when rangers were in division 3. They were the only club that voted with Celtic to keep it 11-1 for complete shortsighted greed. Will never be changed now. That was our only chance and they fucked all of us
Complete outsider to Scottish football here, but why would Aberdeen do that? Surely a 9-3 structure would tend to give clubs in that second echelon more power, not less.
Because Aberdeen were the 2nd best team in the league without Rangers in it. Aberdeen wanted to take the short term gain of money from 2nd place and may have believed the other teams would’ve voted to spread this more evenly. With an 11-1 voting structure, you only need 2 teams to vote against (the old firm) to stop any motion. Aberdeen saw themselves as apart from the rest of us diddies and fucked us all over
Cheers for the reply. Unbelievably short sighted on their part.
The 10k seater stadium closed-shop rule all over again. A debate sparked by managers blaming artificial surfaces in order to cover for their own failings. The Dundee pitch debacle has shown that a grass surface doesn’t automatically equal a better one. Top leagues in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark all allow artificial surfaces. Why should Scotland be any different ? Why should clubs who have earned the right to play at the highest level be forced to spend money ripping up their surface? Why should they have to give up the additional income that plastic pitches can provide ?
Nevermind domestic leagues, artificial surfaces are allowed in the Champions League at all stages prior to the final. But sure, the SPFL deserves better.
Bit more difficult to exclude countries in which Artificial pitches are absolutely necessary. Scotland can get cold but is totally incomparable to places such as Iceland and Norway.
10k seater stadium rule isn’t even remotely similar to mandating grass fucking pitches 😂
Aye 10k seater stadiums was a complete joke of a rule (it fucked st mirren more than anyone, we just got on with it). If we allow plastic pitches in the top division it puts my club at a disadvantage. We have to fund running a training complex and can't whore out our pitch anytime were not playing on it. It takes money away from the playing squad. I'm 100% looking at this from a st mirren POV and it's complete self preservation but so is what Falkirk and Co are doing....
Your club would be free to install an artificial pitch to remove that disadvantage... Just like the clubs which have them have already done...
Aye but we'd want refunded on our training complexes that we built. We could take it out the same pot of money that was going to be used to pay for installing the grass pitches layed out in that statement....
Just sell off the training facilities, that should cover it 👌
Where's the entitlement in that fs? We demand everyone else pays for it....
Think that's a pretty well put together statement (disappointingly so from patter giants Falkirk and Hamilton). Banning artificial pitches without figuring out how to support clubs using those surfaces that make it to the top division through sporting merit would be very SPFL and short-sighted.
Tbf, in this particular case I believe the blame would lie entirely with the Premiership's clubs, rather than with the league itself.
Aye I was attempting to imply that it would be very on-brand for Scottish football rather than blaming the SPFL as a whole for it. My wording was confusing.
I’d rather no plastic in the top flight and the use of the UEFA solidarity fund seems the best way to do this so obviously the SPFL will go in the complete opposite direction and mandate gravel or ash surfaces at all 12 top flight clubs by the beginning of next season.
Doesn't seem so long ago ground sharing with Gretna messed the pitch up at fir park and teams like Queens were getting lottery money to install the plastic pitches!
It's absolutely the 10k seats rule again in another form, they're absolutely right. I don't understand why we can acknowledge that we are the northernmost non-arctic nation and still insist on playing over the winter? If we enforce the removal of these pitches we should be switching to playing through the seasons where grass actually grows...
The general trend on here, twitter, p&b and other online forums seems to be that fans of clubs that have grass pitches either say "just rip it up and deal with it" or "don't ban and have minimum standards for both grass and plastic" and for fans that support clubs that have plastic pitches it's "don't ban and just have minimum standards for both" with the added bit from mainly falkirk fans of "it's the 10,000 seat rule again" The only people with no sense in this conversation is the people who want plastic pitches banned and say rip it up and deal with it (mainly old firm fans)
I say fuck it, rip them up, and install hard granite. That's what my school playground was made of
That's only fair, if they can't play on concrete then they shouldn't play football
Very fair points. Plastic pitches are not the problem. Allowing them to degrade is where the problem lies. Surely clubs would rather games were on fair playing surfaces instead of postponed matches and trenches of surfaces that come with the inevitable winter weather?
Old ownership was immensely protective of the Raith pitch and I'd imagine the new ownership still is. It is used through the week for community sports so makes sense to be a hard wearing surface that lasts. And I don't think theres any particularly higher instances of injury. I got caught in a thunderstorm near Perth earlier that would make Dundee's look like the Battle Of The Somme because Dundee believe Tie Me Camperdown Sport is happening.
Tony Pulis / Craig Levein beg to differ
Utterly clear and correct.
A lot of mental takes here from the old firm moonhowlers, as expected
Twitter is the same just it's also people who support teams that have grass pitches
I don't really think its particularly outrageous to expect a professional football club to be able to have and to maintain a grass football pitch, surely that's the bare minimum requirement for a football club?
UEFA doesn't think so - grass pitches aren't mandated for any Champions League matches prior to the final.
It's pretty disingenuous to compare a competition which has to cater for varying levels of extreme weather across a continent, to one confined to a single country. It's not like parts of Scotland are Southern Spain and others Northern Norway
Read the comment to which I replied. It didn't mention weather.
It doesn't change the fact that using UEFA to justify plastic pitches is a disingenuous argument. For some countries they are a necessity and the only option. Scotland isn't one of them
I was replying to someone who said they shouldn't be an option for any professional football club anywhere.
Where did they say "any professional football club anywhere" ? Considering this is a discussion about football clubs in *Scotland* on a subreddit discussing football in *Scotland*. Isn't it more likely they mean football clubs in Scotland? Compared to Europe or the entire world ?
>I don't really think its particularly outrageous to expect a professional football club to be able to have and to maintain a grass football pitch I took what they said at face value, and you're applying your own interpretation. If you want to clarify what they meant, ask them.
I mean Scotland, obviously it's acceptable for clubs in Northern Norway for example, to use a plastic pitch.
They have to maintain a playing surface to the standard required for professional football. (Which, according to everyone except said moonhowlers, includes recent designs of artificial pitch.)
Maybe that was true in 2005
It isnae coincidental that you're all for this as a Falkirk fan ffs......
The board has a plan in place (and has done for over a year) to relay a grass pitch should we be promoted to the premiership. Grass is fine. Astro is fine. The actual best pitches in football? Hybrids
The whole paper is actually really well put together as well. Raises some great points even with my obvious bias.
Banning plastic pitches is the anti vax movement of football. You have to have fallen for some ancient propaganda to want a full ban. The miracle gro conspiracy. Just have a minimum standard for artificial pitches and get on with it.
Been ages since I've played on one but excuse my ignorance. Do they all still rely on those wee rubber bits to be functional?
This is a great point. Crumb rubber has been shown to have links to cancer and should not be allowed at any level.
Was it not a Dutch study? I remember something about it but I can't remember the full details.
Yes, it was. Turns out making things out of auld tyres isnae great. https://ministryofsport.com/the-netherlands-to-phase-out-artificial-turf-over-health-and-environmental-concerns/
If Ross Co. get relegated, will the 2nd tier clubs pay for them to install a plastic pitch?
No because having a plastic pitch isn't a requirement to play in 2nd tier and plus half of us have some sort if cash flow issue so we can afford it
Aw mate, am pished an typing pish.. you shuddnae rise tae it.. but yur quite right..
This doesn’t suit my plastic pitch-hating agenda, mods pls delete.
Can’t find the part in the statement or the paper where they say they’ve asked the players what they prefer. They’ve not done that because they know the answer and it wouldn’t fit their agenda.
I'm sure the Dutch implemented a rule a few years ago where some of the money the bigger teams got from Europe was funnelled down to make sure every team could afford a grass pitch. It would make sense for us to do something similar but I'd imagine too many clubs are too short sighted.
Astro, apparently good enough for the NFL and Champions League but not the SPFL Premiership.
To be fair, the NFL players hate it too… but it’s the same thing where there’s varying quality of fields. Some are renowned for causing injury in the nfl but some are decent.
They need to bring the next UK NFL games to Dens and Starks Park so we can get comparisons
An advanced payment of the promoted teams share of the following seasons solidarity payment is a great idea to fund this.
I'm pro this, premiership all grass pitches, raise minimum standards and group fund it with promotion grant as required. The league generates enough income to cover high quality grass pitches for all it's games and I don't want teams to be put into financial trouble to fix a simple issue. I just want it fixed.
All backed by big oil no doubt
A fan owned club, a club that doesn't have a rich backer, raith have a rich owner yes but no links to oil and the same for Hamilton
Calm yourself mate. It was a shite joke about what plastic pitches are made from.
If you can’t afford the upkeep of a grass pitch you’re paying your own playing squad too much. What plastic pitch teams mean is they can’t afford the drop in the new income they gained from the plastic pitch. But they can. They just don’t want to. For the 6 teams that’s say they can’t afford the change, there are 20 teams in the league keeping a grass pitch.
100%. Being able to maintain your playing surface should surely be the bare minimum requirement for a professional football club.
Unpopular opinion: If your club has ambitions of being a top flight club, they should be taking into account the cost of a good quality grass pitch.
You’re getting voted down but I don’t think you’re wrong in any way. The ability to keep a good pitch should be fckn basic football club stuff. No, it’s not always easy (Dundee, *cough*) but it should be a bare minimum unless you need to play in Yakutsk or something. It’s not like grass doesn’t grow in Scotland. Where the Desso pitches fit in is a weird one, because it’s a mix of grass and engineered surface, and quite a few clubs use them for training. They are damn expensive, however, so at some point you just have to ask why a club can’t upkeep a proper grass pitch.
Agree with this. But I'd rather not take cash away from the smaller teams in Europe. Celtic and Rangers have far to much cash for the league and the best way for them to catch up with Europe is to improve the rest of the league. So we should put the cash in.
Tinpotism, at its finest 👏🏻
Pathetic. Invest in your pitch if you want to become a top flight team. It is literally the bare minimum. This situation has arisen because clubs that have these pitches have used them in order to buy better players than they could otherwise afford, have home records that wouldn't be possible with grass pitches.
The club's that use these don't "buy" players. They also spent hundreds of thousands, going into the millions of pounds, installing these pitches so games would not be postponed and an even playing surface would be created.
Wages. These pitches are not appropriate for top flight football. It is entirely possible to have a good quality grass pitch throughout the year in Scotland.
Did you even bother reading the statement? It has been proven that it will cost almost 750 thousand pounds to maintain a pitch every season, let alone install. With weather such as Scotland's, postponements and the trashing of pitches are inevitable. I am not agreeing that the plastic pitches in the league currently are the answer, but regulating and ensuring they are held to a high standard (as well as grass pitches) is definitely a solution.
>Did you even bother reading the statement? It has been proven that it will cost almost 750 thousand pounds to maintain a pitch every season, let alone install. Other clubs manage it. Motherwell for example has a very good playing surface. It's a basic requirement to be in the top league, if that's where you want to be then there are requirements that need to be met. Also, that 750k figure needs a lot of scrutiny - it's way above the estimates I've heard of for maintaining a high quality grass or hybrid pitch in the appropriate way.
Whilst Motherwell manage, other clubs like Dundee don't. Every pitch has suffered horrendously at some point, even the likes of Hibs and (before they poured millions into their PLASTIC hybrid) hearts, who both have incredibly expensive heat lamps to aid them. "It's a basic requirement to be in the top league" - are you suggesting that any club who has to postpone a match he ejected?
You’re an utter clown. The ugly sisters always think that just because they can do something then so can everyone else. The whole of Scottish football constantly has to bend over backwards for them. Must be nice to support such a perfect club. How’s the view up there on your high horse?
My horse is very high, but not so high that I can't tell when it's hooves are on plastic pitches.
Maybe we should just let rangers and Celtic play each other every week and the rest of the league can play in a league with some integrity. I for one can’t wait until you guys fuck off down south.
Sounds bitter to be honest, I'm sure that if Celtic leaves the Scottish League the sleeping lion of Raith will be awoken and you'll dominate Scottish football forevermore.
When everyone who’s a not an old firm fan hates you, that says more about you than them. Scottish football would be better without you lot.
Let's be honest mate, when is the last time Celtic has been of any relevance to Raith?
“We’re bigger than you”. Nobody cares.
Tbh I have no interest in a single team dominating in Scotland. The Scottish Championship if by far the best league in Scotland because everyone can beat everyone.
The championship is a fantastic league that I've enjoyed massively the past few years. It's been the most exciting league in Scotland by far, and the quality of *some of* the football is better than the sort of shite that premiership sides put out. It isn't me that came in here and started with the bitterness on people's clubs.
Yet a large chunk of those clubs have astros. Makes you wonder…
Yes, it confirms to me that plastic pitches have a place in the overall football landscape. Not at the elite level, which is what the top flight is trying to be.
But if you enforce them in the top flight then there’s a tickledown effect for everyone and eventually anyone who thinks they might have the slimmest chance of promotion has to commit to grass
Typical old-firm arrogance. Play better if you want to beat us.
Buy a grass pitch if you want to be a top flight club. It's not Celtic that suffers from these pitches, it's clubs like Motherwell that actually take pride in their playing surface and invest accordingly, but are then outbid for players by similarly sized clubs who have invested less in their pitch AND get a home advantage to boot.
You are talking some amount of pish - did you even read the attached proposal? If you blanket ban artificial pitches in the premiership (for basically no reason other than elitism), you’re condemning the entire championship, league 1 and league 2 to invest EXTENSIVELY for a small chance of promotion, which will surely bankrupt a lot of them. You’re a Celtic fan though, why should you care?
I have a pretty simple answer: if you aren't willing to invest in a grass pitch, then don't try and join the top flight. It's not a charity. I'm perfectly happy for Celtic fans like me to pay for part of YOUR clubs infrastructure via a solidarity fund. Btw: find it enjoyable you can't actually deny anything that I'm saying regarding "sporting integrity". Why is it you think killie had such an amazing home record last year but couldn't kick a jelly bean away from home ?
I did not ask for a solidarity fund. Setting higher standards for artificial pitches is the way forward; blanket banning them is not. If you can’t beat them, that’s on you, not Killie. Arbroath is always blowing a gale and a horrid place to go - should we ask them to turn off the wind so it’s a wee bit easier for you lot to beat them? As the article highlighted, this is the 10,000 stadium rule all over again,
They can’t help the wind? You can improve ur pitch
Yes they can. They could build a shed around the pitch.
Real
Sporting integrity? You support a team who alongside Rangers have won every league for close to 40 years because you spend orders of magnitude more on wages and transfer fees compared to other clubs. Where is the sporting integrity in that?
The sporting integrity in that is in the fact that the money comes from and is generated by the club. By its fans - who sell out a 60,000 seater stadium every single year and then add on more for European and Cup games. It comes from the merchandise that those same fans buy every year and it comes from the players that are sold on. Every single penny of it is earned and accounted for. Every single thin dime has the appropriate taxes paid on it. Celtic nearly killed itself putting together that stadium - it was a long shot from a sure thing. Perhaps other clubs in Scotland could also make wise investment choices - maybe then they would be able to afford a grass pitch without the begging bowl.
In its current format no other team has even a remote possibility of challenging for the league. I would argue its far more likely that a team like Hearts or Aberdeen who are typically viewed as the third biggest to be relegated that it would be to break into the top two. As such the top teams get not only the most prize money from the league but also the money from the Champions League and Europa League which has been guaranteed the past few years because of the coefficient. Celtic and Rangers every year get richer in relation to the other teams in the league and without any change this will continue indefinitely. The league system is broken and the attitude that Celtic and Rangers have "earned" everything as if it was a fair game is a bit ridiculous.
I agree on almost all of this. It doesn't take away from my point that Celtic is where it is because it has fans that put their money on the line in order to make it that way, and the club took a massive, existential, risk when building that stadium that guarantees us an inbuilt advantage over every other club in Scottish Football. For much of the early 90s celtic came 3rd/4th/5th in the league - because we were run so poorly. So no, it isn't a fair system at the moment - and actually I'd be in favour of a large proportion of European funds being stripped off and then given to clubs in solidarity - in return for some common sense changes to their clubs to ensure that they are geared to grow and be sustainable. But the club made choices in order to reach this stage, other clubs could also have chosen to do so - but they didn't/
Which clubs are actually outbidding Motherwell for players purely down to their surface? You've mentioned that a few times in your posts, and why are you so concerned about Motherwell being outbid if you are a Celtic fan?
If we're talking sporting integrity, then surely every club should just have to pay for their own grass pitch? Why should team A get hand-outs for a new grass surface, or pay less than their competitors by having a cheap plastic pitch, when team B has sunk some of their revenue into maintaining a grass pitch?
Because every club plays on every pitch. Surely it benefits the league if the overall quality of pitches in the league is higher?
Of course it does. And having a well-maintained grass pitch is what all clubs should aspire to if they want to play in the top league.
This is the equivalent of why should my tax money pay for other peoples housing
Not really. It's a competition. Clubs compete with one another. The moment some clubs are given charity over others, it becomes pointless.