The Condition of the Pitch

Could be like Derby's Baseball ground circa 1970..

 

It was a thing of beauty.


replying to @Klaatu

 

Oh for the 70s...

 

They would know all about it.They had to completely relay their pitch halfway through last season.

 

I can remember Upton Park looking not much better than that in the 70s.

 

Remember this?

 

If I remember rightly Sparks said they wanted to stitch the pitch this year (integrate 'fake' grass alongside normal grass) but the Midland Rd seats were done first. All the Prem/Championship pitches are stitched, hence lots of them looking amazing all year round.

 

Sorry I’m struggling with the logic. Can midland roaders tel me if the seats could no longer be sat on? If they’re okay then I’ve no idea why you wouldn’t prioritise the pitch, which is actually an important component to playing a football match over making the stands look shinier. The pitch is an important part of a clubs infrastructure, if it affects our form through the season or we get complaints then I’d say that’s far more important than new seats.

 

Our seats at the back of A block were perfectly fine. I wasn't aware of a deterioration although at the front of the stand the colours may have faded a bit.

 

Same here in Block D. New seats feel like a 'nice to have' rather than an essential and given a choice, investing in a decent pitch wins hands down for me.

 

Amazing!

 

It would only take a small amount of seats to be unrepairable for it to mean the only cost effective solution is to replace them all, it's very likely there will be a lot of broken seats in the 2 away blocks as they are always the first to be broken. If seats can't be replaced then you end up having to close seats or even a section depending on how unsafe it is.

I could be wrong with this but going on what Ryan Sparks said I think the deal for the seats will be the same type of deal as the one when we started the renovations back in 2020 with a company who went out of business around a 18 months later which ended the deal after only the Main Stand was done. The deal at the time was for the whole stadium to be done a bit at the time every summer and it would be paid for in monthly installments to help with club cash flow and because of the long term commitment the club got a very reasonable discount albeit it was still costing a lot of money.

If that is the case then we will have signed a long term contract with a new company so the money will have been committed into the contract for the Midland Road stand to be done this summer.

 

It also helps especially Premier League clubs that they have state of the art drainage, undersoil heating and lots of lighting rigs that cover the whole pitch and a massive energy bill to go with it as they are on almost 24/7 from around October until March apart from a couple of hours before kick off and an hour or 2 after full time and a short amount of time whilst they cut the grass at least every other day.

To get our pitch to a Premier League level I would imagine it will be 8 figures as before you do any of the undersoil heating, drainage, stiching and lighting we need to find a way of fixing the deep rooted issues of the land the pitch is on and the wall under the pitch.

 

Well we sold the stand out in our last home game before the Preston game, so if there were ones in such disrepair I feel we’d not have sold certain areas. A team can be sanctioned because of their pitch by the EFL if I’m not mistaken and weren’t we forced to invest in 2018. Tbh I was sat in my usual seat yesterday and I’ve never seen it tearing up so much before November time, let alone before the start of the league season. I think we’ll be receiving communications about it from the EFL well before the seasons out.

 

I think it was to do with cosmetic rather than the seats not being fit for purpose, as @WilsdenBantam said you would hope if we want to get the best out of better players (league one instead of league two) then you expect the best facilities possible, you have to ask if we couldn't afford both why couldn't our owner dig deeper and that's not a criticism the pitch should have priority.

 

Well if we draw Leeds at home in the next round of the Carabao Cup, ol' Sparksy will have to arrange for all those nice new seats to be replaced again!!

 

I thought we had solar panels installed on the stand roofs so we could obtain more lighting rigs, surely they would go a long way to offsetting out electric bills ?.

 

It would probably depend on how much energy they generate and how much of a surplus we generate. The other problem with the lighting rigs is where do you store them when they are not in use on match days especially during the season as you need somewhere close by that you can wheel them in and out of the stadium. I think for the ones we use at the moment when they're in storage during the match they're put in the small gated off area behind the City Hub Cafe so we can't which will be able to hold 2 or 3 at most.

 

Just watching Notts county the pitch looks superb with all the pitch sprinklers on. Makes our pitch look 3rd world