Grounds Management Hard Porous Pitch Maintenance: 02. The Pitch

Hard Porous Pitch Maintenance: 02. The Pitch advert image shown if present

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A prepared surface for play should be even, with minimal loose material present on the surface and without any ponding of water present.

The surface should provide a satisfactory and consistent playing performance, although this would not be as good as a grass surface.

Hard porous surfaces were mostly provided as a complement to grass pitches, helping to increase the carrying capacity of the land, which was often limited in many city areas and schools, and allow play to take place when grass pitches started to become worn and when natural turf ground conditions were unsuitable.

The main sports suited for this type of surface were football (primarily training and general school games but not adult league games as the surface was usually not suitable for sliding tackles, diving headers and other player-surface interactions which would cause significant injuries by grazing and cuts), hockey and netball on larger areas, whilst tennis was often located as dedicated courts. Athletics tracks and run-ups for field events, such as long jump and high jump were also supported by hard porous surfaces.

In essence, a hard porous surface could be considered a useful general-purpose surface which allowed sport and exercise to take place, where otherwise it wouldn’t happen on many grass fields due to poor ground conditions. However, the issue of minor but persistent injuries has seen these surfaces mostly being replaced with synthetic surfaces.