the pitch will ultimately be judged on what type of return on investment it produces, it just makes no financial sense to have the biggest area of a modern stadium only contributing to the up keep for a couple of hours for about 20 weekends

I don't think that one season will give enough data to draw any conclusions, and owing to the fact that no two games of rugby are ever the same, you can never have a real control group to compare against.

Don't forget; correlation does not equal causation.

I'm in favour of us playing on grass, but the iPitch has been a great creation for the community.

It's really soft (though strangley firm( compared to grass and is unforgiving. I don't think it's to blame for the broken leg, torn achilles or ACL rupture that's been suffered on it this year, but I think the general wear from training on such a surface as this will causep layers slowly-released harm. Shin splints, sore knees, hips, ankles and the like. Betts has admitted the Widnes side have had to resort to sometimes training on grass to give the players a rest from it.

Another note - watching the video of the match yesterday, it was unbelievably tatty-looking. Couldn't see any markings or anything.

Ideally, Widnes could move the iPitch to the proposed training ground on the old ICI pitches, return to grass and hopefully keep a lot of the business that the iPitch has generated. Of course, the stadium surroundings are central to this, but I'd like to think at a smart training facility there will be some appeal for the local football and touch rugby squads to carry on hiring it out.

Well you had better check the research fella as I did, it shows that there are more/greater injuries based just on impact alone on on ipithces, just because something is changed doesn't make it better does it. It is mainly for financial reasons plus eveness of the surface I guess.
Yes of course most players are short sleeved, however the pertinant parts regarding grazes such as knees/legs are covered, those involved in diving around like the Safety's LB/TE/WR/RB's etc all wear gloves in any case

www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/ ... 2Q20120501

www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/ ... 2Q20120501

Very true, the KC Stadium has this done, dunno how they do it tho, has footy n rugby played on it constantly and seems to hold up ok