This may be a daft question but what footwear do you need for the iPitch?
does it take a stud? Blade studs? Trainers or those dimple soles like they used on the artificial pitches in the 80s?
Perhaps anyone who has follows Russian footy will know or maybe someone has played on this sort of surface somewhere else.

Need to sack your informant Pete, Turf not being delivered until next week at earliest. Dependant on contractors xmas break and weather you wont see "grass" laid this year

I can't see it being much of an advantage if any, the majority of the game is played with ball in hand running, the ball doesn't deviate much when comparing [current] all weather pitches and well groomed stadium grass pitches in the summer.
Just deal with it, besides hasn't playing at home always been about having a slight advantage, crowd, changing rooms etc?

Brilliant.

Live from Langtree Park, St Helens, we bring you the eagerly-awaited return of Widnes Vikings to Super League live on Sky Sports.

May explain a bit why we haven't arranged any friendlies on it 'just in case'. Doubt it's a major worry as (via Asterix pictures) there has been a fair bit of progress and some of the bottom 'sponge type layer' is down.

Also it's not as if we need to wait for the grass to grow

Possibly it could backfire on Widnes. Every other team has to play 1 game on this pitch. Widnes will have to play 14 games on the "alien" surface of grass!