Artificial Sports Pitches: An Ideal Choice For Many Sports

Most of the outdoor sports like football, hockey, tennis (Wimbledon), rugby, netball, and many more have always been played on natural grass surfaces. However, owing to their high cost of maintenance and also their non-adaptability to extreme weather conditions, such as frozen winters, a need was felt for a better alternative.

Artificial Sports Pitches came into the picture around 1960s when Astroturf, a Synthetic Grass turf, was installed in the newly built Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

Artificial turf is a man-made turf manufactured from synthetic materials. Over the years, numerous technological advances have been made in order to create a man-made artificial sports pitch that closely resembles the playing characteristics of grass, whilst ensuring players’ safety. Available in three varieties, namely water-bound (un-filled), sand-dressed and sand filled, these surfaces consist of a shock pad underneath the top layer which protects the players from injury. Therefore, falling and sliding on an artificial football pitch is no different from that on a natural grass surface. An artificial turf pitch may even offer an improvement on natural grass such as in the case of hockey pitches. A hockey pitch made from synthetic fibres offers increased speed to the movement of the ball and allows for different techniques like reverse stick trapping and hitting.

Known as an all-weather pitch, synthetic turf requires minimal maintenance. There are many specialist firms in the UK that install synthetic grass sports pitches, each with different playing characteristics such as ball roll and bounce, shock absorption, slip resistance, and so on. A range of surfaces is available, to suit the needs of different sports.