- Jan 16, 2014
- 4,652
- 5,738
It would have been nice to get some reassurance that the playing surface has not been compromised by this pretty radical technical solution to the problem.This is most likely me being really stupid and it may have been mentioned and shot down before but is there likely to be any side effects with regards to the bounce of the ball due to having a retractable pitch? I know it’s not going to be like Monoco who have a underground car park underneath their pitch but I was wondering if we have any comparisons we can draw on with other stadiums.
They could have run some tests on the tray at the training ground, comparing the ball bounce height at different parts of the tray, for different drop heights, thump it with different weights to see how resistive it is compared to a standard pitch. I'm sure engineers could think of loads of others.
They could even have got the players to have a kick around and asked them! But I've seen no evidence that a player or a ball has been anywhere near these trays, even at this late stage.
It might be because as wsauce says, for someone technical, it is obvious the trays will have no effect. They are too heavy and anything deeper than a couple of inches down is irrelevant.
Or it might be that this is the only solution. If the pitch bounces the ball up like a beach ball, or kills it dead in places, then that is the way it is. They'll be able to tinker with it a bit, but basically this is reality as MP might say. Get on with it.