the reason why I've said why is this pitch changeable after watching tonight's game the excess black rubber that bounced after either the ball foot or player was excessive.

the bounce by the ball was far greater than a normal run of the mill grass pitch in fact it put our defense in disarray at times and was at least to blame to some silly errors.

who's to say that they couldn't control what the pitch does by adding and removing this rubber

I still think this pitch is not of the quality and should be removed

I bet it's quite uncomphy for the players too, those black bits get everywhere!!!

I still think it must give them the advantage and shouldn't have been allowed.

That pitch takes some getting use to and is a major advantage to widnes they are like the QPR of the 80s, the bounce of the ball is so difficult to judge compared to a normal grass pitch.

I just wonder if this can be vac'd up and distributed to produce a different bounce, it looked like there was spring under foot like a trampoline

Completely agree. Good move by Agar not risking Poore with such a dodgy surface RFL get it banned.

Look at Ben Cross and Rhys Handbury now with their knee injuries Cross has just missed 5 games with knee ligament damage. Cross did it just falling hard onto the surface from the replay!
Anyway it gave Wilkes the opportunity to 'poore' some misery on Widnes and turn back the clock of his second row days running 40 yards out to score that try!

They should be forced into ripping the goddam thing up. Either that or Lee Smith should bend his back, their 1st try being an exception, crazy bounce.

what about the one that bounce over Aiton's head

Can that black stuff be inhaled... Or ingested.

Looks very dodgy to me.

Hanbury is a hamstring pull.

#ipitchgetstheblameagain

I think the OPs question is a valid one, can Widnes add or remove the volume of crumb in order to change the performance of the pitch and therefore increase their home advantage?

It's similar to football teams cutting the grass to a certain length or watering the pitch to make the pitch faster or in RL terms it's like moving the touchlines in a metre to curb an expansive teams ability go wide.

The main difference for me is the question of whether excessively adding crumb to the pitch makes players more susceptible to injury, especially players whose bodies are not physiologically adapted to playing on that kind of surface.

I doubt anybody can really answer the question as it would need to be by way of scientific study but as I said it's a valid question

I would imagine that adding more of the 'crumb' would affect the surface but I would guess that we don't doctor the pitch to negate whichever team we play against. My suggestion is that the pitch is inspected regularly and the crumb is added to manufacturers guidelines so that the recommended optimum playing surface is maintained.

we can also add the shape of the pitch as Bradford has had the corners of their pitch turned up turned up for years

its not like some clubs haven't used the size of the pitch to their advantage, at junior level, we once had encounter where the pitch was that narrow it ended up being a bruising game with one nasty injury, also I have seen the grass that long that when the ball was on the floor you could hardly see it.

I really hope we don't go down this road when we go to Newmarket

well I would guess that adding that much crumb to the playing surface it will make the ball bounce unnaturally like it did in the game,
I have never played on a surface like that one but would love to hear comments from the players that have

IMO they do change the surface, and last night it looked as the 2 ends played different. The Widnes kicking game changed in the 2nd half to cater for the difference, I dont think this was an off the cuff decision - they knew which game to play at which end.

The pitch is it self unnatural and i don't think the 'crumb' level will have that much influence on the bounce of the ball. The pitch leads to an unpredictable bounce regardless of how well it's maintained. They train on the pitch so you'd expect they would have a better insight into it just as we should at BV.