The Pitch

It plays slow and its in balanced its awful its just not right IMO

More subjective nonsense, not predicated on any facts. It’s an easy target and opposition players - such as those in the OF - had criticised it before they’d even played on it.

For Kieran Teirney’s hamstring ‘niggle’ to be blamed on the pitch, when it evidently didn’t affect MacGregor, Christie or Forrest, is surely an embarrassing statement for the media to report.

Correlation does not mean causation. I’d love someone to produce findings that support their position - that the artificial pitches are poor to play on and cause more injuries than grass ones. I assume that if facts were available, the authorities would not allow such pitches to be used in the top flight. When a player gets injured on the artificial pitches, it was the fault of the pitch. When countless players suffer the same injuries on grass pitches, it’s just one of those things that happens to footballers.

Perhaps we should ask for grass pitches to be banned because Ryan Hardie suffered a horrible injury at Tannadice at the end of last season.

We are about to find out how irregular and inconsistent grass pitches are - heavy, barren and rutted during winter. Some will drain well, others won’t. Some will remain even, others will be like ploughed fields. The suggestion that grass pitches are consistent ihas no basis in fact. Livi’s home advantage, if one exists, is no different to the advantage that any other home team can have. Hearts like to keep their grass longer sometimes. Quite right too. Rangers and Celtic like their grass pitches to be cut short, as wide as possible and well watered to suit their play. How dare Livi have a slow pitch against The OF?!

For once, Livi is a club playing within its means. An atirifical surface generates new income. It encourages community support. It allows the players to train at their home pitch every day without having to hire an alternative venue. It makes absolutely perfect economic and footballing sense. Those ready to crirticise that decision have yet to offer an alternative way for smaller clubs like ours to survive. We can’t afford to spend £2.4m on lights to entertain 60,000 fans before kick-off. So, cutting our cloth is eminently sensible.

Finally, once teams come to the TMA and start to win, perhaps the pitch will receive less attention.

Yeah the pitch is getting a lot of criticism, mostly from folk that haven't even played on it, or seen it. Favourite one I've seen is "apparently Livi's is the worst one". The "apparently" part instantly gives their statement no credibility.

Killie's pitch always got it tight too, more so in recent seasons, when they started winning on it, not so much when they were rotten and lost to teams, funny that isn't it?

The mistake we made was not paying a bit extra for green pellets, the black ones made it more noticeable, plus in the bedding in stage we were a bit heavy with the pellets. Looks a lot better now since we thinned them down a bit and the pitch has settled in with us playing a few games on it.


McLeish's comments were ridiculous, and quite frankly out of order, good to see Gary Holt saying as much in a response to him, totally agree with Holt too, it's just being used for an excuse for teams dropping points to us, or folk with ill informed opinions rolling out the astro turf clichés.

I disagree with you Auldnick, Accies got the green pellets and you can hardly see them kicking up, our black pellets drew the eye to them and the Sportscene guys never stopped talking about them spraying up.

On kicks and bounces, ball sticking etc, grass pitches do that too, you just get used to it and home advantage applies on grass too, so on that score I see no difference. I noticed the semi final at Murrayfield had the ball sticking on the pitch.

*Edited to add, our grass pitch was hardly ideal the last few seasons anyway, i'd say the astro pitch we have this season is better than what we've had for about three or four seasons.

Given the recent excellent performances for Scotland by Celtic trio Forrest, MacGregor and Christie so soon after their visit to the TMA, perhaps the whole Scotland team should train on an artificial pitch before matches in future.........rather than blaming the surface on phantom injuries.

Better still, bring in some Livi players to shore up the national team’s defence.

But the point is being missed.

English premier pitches are perfect throughout the year as is English championship that is due to two simple elements ground staff and heat lamps. Simple science when you imitate the sun the grass grows.

It does not cost the earth for either.

Anyway im sure we will reep the benefits of renting out the pitch for £150 an hour should have payback back in no time!!!

Yes again assumed I was comparing apples with sand, where quite opposite.

The gap is indeed tremendous but the PRINCIPLE remains the same its not fortunes to rent / hire appropriate equipment in this day and age to do as nature does. The payback of artificial vs grass interesting to find out out season costs to keep ypur pitch green.