Footballers in the Scottish Premiership have signed a petition calling for artificial surfaces in Scottish football's top flight to be banned, citing the resulting inconsistency as a crucial factor.
Every Premiership player signed the petition, apart from those contracted to Kilmarnock, Hamilton and Livingston, who were asked by PFA Scotland not to take part as there could be a potential conflict of interest.
The document, submitted by PFA Scotland, says that artificial surfaces offer 'distinctive differences' to grass pitches and argues that this leads to inconsistency at the summit of Scottish football.
A second petition has been launched, signed by each club in the Championship, League One and League Two, calling for an improvement in the standard of both grass and artificial surfaces.
St Johnstone midfielder Liam Craig, who is the chairman of PFA Scotland, said: "Players believe that removing artificial surfaces from the top league and improving them throughout the SPFL Championship, League One and League Two will have a positive impact on our game in Scotland.
"The inconsistency of artificial surfaces at the top level of Scottish football is a major factor of how the game is played by players. The ball rolls and bounces differently, which affects a player's decision-making.
"Movements such as running, turning and tackling on the pitch also have a negative impact on the body which inevitably affects a player's performance. Players often say it takes longer to recover after playing on an artificial pitch. This can not only affect future performances, but also team selection."
PFA chief executive Fraser Wishart added: "This is a strong, powerful message from our members, those that actually play the game.
"It is abundantly clear from our conversations with all 42 squads that our members feel passionately about Scottish football and care about the image and perception of the game they love.
"The Premiership recently agreed television contracts meaning Premiership matches will be seen all over the world; this can only be good for Scottish football, which is in a good place now.
"Our members in the Premiership want to see regulation in place that will ensure all Premiership pitches are grass which are maintained to the highest standards. The standard of grass pitches in the Premiership has improved, particularly since the Pitch Rater App has been in place, therefore there is no reason why clubs at the highest level cannot have a well-maintained grass pitch.
"Our members in all divisions feel artificial surfaces are often over-used and the priority seems to be community use, not first team matches, therefore these surfaces drop in standard very quickly. Players in the Championship, League One and League Two ask for a quicker turn around when replacing the artificial surfaces they play on."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel