Plastic Fantastic

As this afternoon's 'Homecoming' Scottish Cup ties began to take shape (am I the only supporter who actually likes the new name for the tournament?), my focus was, as ever, on events at Ochilview. Amongst the other ties, though, I found myself taking a particular interest in the clash between Alloa and Aberdeen at Recreation Park, and allowed myself a wry smile when the home side equalised just before the break. (I'm writing this at half-time: it's currently 0-0 between Stenny and East Fife, and 1-1 between Alloa and Aberdeen.) Why this enthusiasm for Alloa match, I hear you ask?

My interest stems entirely from the attitude shown by the Aberdeen boss, Jimmy Calderwood, towards Alloa's artificial playing surface. Earlier this week, he admitted he was considering resting several of his star players, since the risk of injury on the plastic surface was too great. I have always had the utmost respect for Jimmy Calderwood - he is a terrific coach - and to be fair to him, he retracted his comments after holding a training session on the surface. Nevertheless I was surprised he didn't make more of an attempt to get his facts right before speaking out in public. His scepticism about the playing surface presumably stems from Dunfermline's experiment with a plastic pitch - the only one in league football in the country at the time - whilst he was the manager there. Yet whilst there was widespread opposition to Dunfermline's surface - perhaps with good reason - it is well-known that those artificial pitches installed more recently, such as Alloa's and our own, are made to a higher-quality specification.

From my own perspective - and I'm sure most Warriors fans would agree with me here - the plastic pitch has been a great success. Our old grass surface used to cut up every winter; the new surface looks fantastic all year round, despite being used much more heavily. Hiring the pitch out to the Shire, not to mention making it available for private hire, provides a valuable source of revenue for the club - clearly this would not have been feasible with a grass surface. With regards to the quality of the surface, meanwhile, these 'new' artificial surfaces are FIFA Grade 2 approved, i.e. Champions League approved. That makes it seem all the more ridiculous when managers raise unfounded safety concerns, or, last summer, when the SPL forced newly-promoted Hamilton to replace their top-quality artificial surface with a (quite possibly lower quality) grass eqivalent.

As I come to the end of my article, we're now well into the second half, and unfortunately Alloa are trailing the Dons by two goals to one. More importantly, however, we are level at 0-0 with East Fife, and thus in with a fighting chance of reaching the fifth round. The BBC website's claim that ours was a featured match on 'Final Score,' on BBC1, appears to be nonsense, so I will stay tuned to Radio Scotland and keep my fingers crossed for the last few minutes...