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Football ... the most popular sport in the world

Football is a simple sport and that is why it has become the most popular sport in the world.

In many cases is played on natural grass pitches but, becoming more and more popular, the hours of use of the same pitch increased drastically and foot traffic of the players tend to compact the soil and let the grass die easily after few games. The green industry has developed several specialized cultivation machines to relief soil compaction and improve drainage as well to select grass varieties resistant to foot traffic and environmental type of stress for the grass growth, thus to improve the wear and tear resistant of the grass and the number of hours that was possible to be used for official games and workouts.

In professional stadiums have been introduced different sand based growth mediums together with 1 or 2 drainage layers and drainage pipes system disposed in trenchers, similar to the USGA Texas Method for the green construction to grant quick water infiltration and to avoid the risk to suspend an important game because of adverse weather conditions.

All those techniques had as result to increase the quality of the playing surface and the number of hours that the pitch was available in good conditions and in some cases was possible to reach up to 600 hours/year, but increased the costs for the maintenance and the average cost per hour for good quality turf.

With time the number of players increased more and more in the same playing surface and has contributed, in some cases, to a gradual degradation of the sports pitches that could no longer meet the needs of the football associations.

Later was introduced the game for 5 players and subsequently for 7. Football has then spread out quickly from professional players to a much wider catchment area from young boys of five years old to the men of 60 years old with different purposes: fun and social aggregation.

Over the past few years there have been numerous fields with artificial turf and this has helped to increase the number of practitioners of this sport so popular and attractive.

The introduction of synthetic turf has allowed the built new pitches in synthetic grass for easy maintenance. The industry today proposes quality artificial turf can withstand an incalculable number of playing activities. That fulfilled the markets demand for several years since is possible to use the pitch 7 days week, 24 hours a day and artificial pitches were a great solution to fulfil the extended number of hours.

Specialized construction companies (including us) have built over the years many more artificial turf pitches that those with natural grass, as a result of the market request to use the fields for more than three hours per day, in any weather conditions, with the possibility of also tournaments during the summer.

Years later we got some experience and the outcome is not so positive for artificial turf. Some prefered to go back to Natural especially for low budgets and health problems. After all, we've seen that only in few cases the real use exceeded 1000 hours per season. Therefore several questions raised:

how many hours do you really need to play on your pitch?
do you have to use the pitch during hot sunny days?
what standard of playing surface are you looking for?
shall the investment pay back based on the real hours of use per year?
do players appreciate good enough artificial turf?

PowerGrass is the best playing surface ever seen world wide.

If you consider that the best playing surface with less injuries is natural grass and that injuries on natural turf are often related to the bad conditions of the pitch, especially during the winter, you may realise that PowerGrass is the best way to get a real Natural surface to play on, reinforced with artificial turf to outstand up to 1400 hours of game, with no risks of injuries related to the pitch.

Whatever is your choice, make sure that the construction of the pitch meets high standard of quality playing surfaces, planar, draining, well maintained and that's easy with PowerGrass. Over the growing period the pitch is completely covered with natural grass and you can hardly see any damages after a game, meanwhile over the winter period the stability of the grass sods is ensured since the roots anchor to the mat. In case of extreme use over the winter natural grass may collapse is some areas but the surface will remain flat and playable up to the end of the season. Next spring new leaves will grow again from the existing crowns and the surface will be green again.

Integrating Geofill PG, a special designed soil conditioner for hybrid turf systems to be mixed with sand, we provide a) a softer playing surface suitable to player demands resistant to compaction, b) more air circulation and at the same time the proper humidity in the root zone c) an insulating effect that will promote fresh habitat during hot summers and warmer over winter time and d) a shock absorbing surface over players falls.

The market options

With the technology and materials available in the market today it is possible to carry out three different types of sports floorings based on the number of hours of use and agronomic expertise of the groundsmen:

Pitches in Natural Grass ... for the traditional playing hours up to 3 hours a day.
Pitches in Artificial Turf (Synthetic)... for the intensive playing activity relentlessly.
Pitches in PowerGrass^®... the fields of professionals available to everyone, guaranteed up to 6 hours of play per day.

Note: PowerGrass fully integrates with pure natural grass so you can only reinforce the main playing area, meanwhile the surroundings up to the fences can be built up just with natural grass with similar sand based growth medium, resulting in a significant cost savings compared to a field entirely artificial.

Verbania 07 ott 2012