Normal grass does not grow very well there for some reason!

From how the Widnes guy described it, it's not part real and part artificial. It's made of a sand and rubber base with individual plastic blades of grass coming out at random like real grass. It has all year round performance at the same level and they claim that water does not affect it as it drains through and is taken out from underneath.

I must admit I'm in Eddie's shoes. I've never played on a modern artificial pitch and I still have the scars on my body from when I played football on the astro at school. Apparantly these pitches give if you stamp your foot into them, they give if you twist your foot on it, reducing ankle injuries. But they don't feel spongy or bouncy.

It's safe to say most people won't have walked on a pitch like this. It'll still have that fear factor for players. I used to be terrified of sliding on an old astro, I can't imagine it will be easy to commit to sliding on these pitches like you can on real grass.

But if they perform like Widnes claim, these could become widespread in the sport and across football as well.

Normal grass would wither with fear as soon as it was tread by o'connors Titans only 'Future Grass' can handle the mighty Vikings

Can someone tell me what the 'intelligent' in i-grass means? What does the grass do intelligently?

It should not be a problem for any of the N West teams as they have all trained on this pitch at Leigh East

They are very good , but still not quite real grass

It plays your MP3's for you.

If you plug an i-phone into it, it downloads pictures to your C drive automtically.

It cleans itself after st heleners have been on it!

Seems like a good idea to me.

They will be able to use it 7 days a week and they will be able to play academy/youth games on it without the fear of ruining the pitch.

Also won't need moving or too much hard work once it's up and running.

Won't there a problem for Widnes in that the super duper "dry weather" teams (we know who they are) will have a field day against the Vikings when other teams will, as happens, bring them down to there level on the wet boggy pitches of the early season?

Will it mean the Stobart is no longer used for football , as the markings on these pitches are permanent , are they not ?

I'm sure one of the things the council guy they interviewed said was that you could change the sport that was played from week to week so it meant it could be used far more extensively by the community.

I might be wrong , but I did think they were permanent markings

It depends on which paint they use. (crown or dulex)

In theory it just means Widnes will have to play that brand of rugby... what a shame