The pitch up there has been that way for a couple of games now. I mentioned that strip of grass in the game that was delayed due to the storm.
I don’t think the surface played a part in the injuries apart from being a little heavy under foot.
I put the injuries down to poor conditioning resulting in an inability to handle the conditions. That’s no slight on the S&C team, more just an acknowledgement that playing a high intensity sport with the temperature in the high 20’s and the humidity at close to 100% will result in an increased chance of muscle fatigue/injury.
I was saying this to a mate the other day. It seems unnecessary for example to bring Sydney FC and Victory supports together in the same stadium and precinct when they’re not even playing against each other (and same goes for Victory/Adelaide).
You’re assuming Victorians who bought a ticket for a double header decide to hang around to watch their two rivals play one another, as opposed to just leaving…
Such a thing would be difficult to prove because they’ve had bad weather. That said, Suncorp has comfortably the worst-maintained pitch in the A-League. It is regularly not of a standard for a national-level professional football competition. It’s not a stadium I’d take international games to if I could help it. If we must have international games in Queensland, offer them lesser games at Robina until they can sort their shit out with Suncorp. Football deserves better.
All the more reason that the game should not have been played at Suncorp. If the stadium’s playing surface has been affected by the storms, then it’s not suitable for a professional game of football. By playing the game on a pitch that has been damaged by storms/floods, you’re putting clients at a heightened risk of injury.
It’s up to the owners of Suncorp stadium to ensure the playing surface is as good as possible before hosting a sporting event. It’s negligence on the APLs behalf if they deemed the field playable.
Hopefully the injuries to our players are nothing more than strains, and at worst the odd muscle tear, but if a player(s) had come down with ACL injuries, or broken a ankle/leg then either the operators of the field, or the APL who ticked off on approving the match to go ahead should be held liable for negligence.
It was funny watching Joe Lolley at the end of the match when asked about the playing surface said “It wasn’t ideal”, you could tell by the expression on his face that he was dying to burst out “It was fucking shithouse”.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that the field was looking terrible too. The APL and Brisbane Roar should be holding Suncorp Stadium for not providing a safe or quality playing surface.
The one good thing about the couple of seasons the Roar were playing up at Redcliffe, the pitch always looked decent.
Yet our game is the only one played there that is an outlier for injuries.
That says to me that the pitch isn’t to blame and that it is down to our players not being able to handle the conditions that the game was played in.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but should we really have played Jack Rodwell on a heavy pitch in such hot and humid conditions?
I’m considering the scenario where you have victory fans leaving the stadium and being around the precinct around the same time that Sydney fans are arriving or drinking in surrounding areas.
The quality of the field has been the subject of numerous discussions over the course of over a decade. The grass and overall surface has been criticized for injuries to players in both Rugby League and Union. A quick brief Google Search finds articles as far back as 2013. It’s a notoriously sandy field, which comes from the ground staff using a ridiculous amount of sand to try and ‘level’ the playing surface. Even the bits of the field that had been re-laid on the weekend were ridiculously sandy. Every time a player kicked, or went for a run, it looked like somebody trying to lob a ball out of a sand trap on a golf course.
So much so, that former Rugby League player Justin Hodges looked to take legal action against the stadium back in 2003 after he did his ACL during a SoO game, that was described by many as being played on a Sandpit.
Caceres is also coming back from injury. He could well come off the bench and I reckon Burgess would not have the match fitness to play more than an hour. It would make sense to play it like that, but who knows what will happen?
Fucking hell, six weeks for King is an eternity. Probably going to see every possible combination of JGR, JCP, De Jesus, Gurd and whoever the hell else across the backline in that time.
