Lost it haven't you.

City do insist on a new pitch being laid before they start.

Typo corrected

Think City need more then a new pitch next season! In fact they may prefer to turn the pitch into a quagmire.

All this injury talk reminded me of something…

When City played the 1st game at the KC (a friendly vs Sunderland I think) I was at work listening to the radio & in the build up I remember talk about the playing surface. The commentators were surprised at how hard the pitch was, but explained this would be perfect for passing a football as it would fizz along the surface. It was likened to a snooker table.

They then went on to say that they wouldn't fancy playing rugby on it though as it would be like playing on concrete. Footballers tend to slide across the surface, but rugby players hit the ground much harder… & there seemed very little give if you got your studs stuck in the surface.

This has probably been mentioned before, but I wonder if the KC playing surface has been a contributing factor in some of these injuries?

Interesting point. Some injuries like Byrne's weren't sustained at the KC but it would be interesting to see how many of those over the last couple of seasons have been.

It might not be connected...just thought I'd mention it.

I'd guess ankle / knee ligament injuries would be the most common if there wasn't much give in the pitch.

It's strange you should mention this because my boss suggested it yesterday and he is a footy fan who has played both football and rugby and insists you need a different pitch to play both. The hardness of the surface and the low cut grass during the football season where the major problems he saw, at least when it is left a little longer they land on a softer surface.

That said though Wigan must have a different pitch to the KC because they don't seem to have a rake of injuries.

It would be interesting to see how many knee injuries etc., have been obtained at the kc by other teams.

Matt Diskin springs to mind straight away playing for GB.

Our fitness looks shocking anyway, we always seem to be blowing after 10 mins.

Injuries have played there part no doubt, but agar has made some horryfying tatical decisions on top of some poor signings imo

I'm not disagreeing. But specifically on injuries, ours are, for the second year running, the worst in SL over the season by some margin. Coincidence or were there any that were avoidable? The pitch point is an interesting one. Clearly not all the injuries we've had have been sustained at the KC, but potentially is there an indirect impact of playing alternate weeks on the hardest playing surface in the competition?

Wigan would suffer the same wouldn't they?

And Huddersfield.......they didn't have the same injuries with the same type pitch AND the same conditioner.

Its a factor in why we are losing. However, I don't care who is on the pitch as long as they play with pride. They don't though

Do all football clubs have exactly the same sort of pitch though? The only thing I know about the KC's is it made a right mess of some of our players when they were re-seeding it earlier in the season due to its synthetic components. By contrast, criticisms of the pitch at the JJB seem to centre on the fact that is is too soft and heavy, rather than too hard. All just guesswork, but surely after consistently having 8+ players unavailable there needs to be some in-depth analysis on whether any of the injuries could have been avoided?