Natural Turf Surfaces

Abstract

It is well documented that health and social benefits can be attained through participation in sport and exercise. Participation, particularly in sports, benefits from appropriate surface provisions that are safe, affordable and high quality preferably across the recreational to elite continuum. Investment, construction and research into artificial sports surfaces have increased to meet this provision. However, not all sports (e.g. golf, rugby and cricket) are suited to training and match-play on artificial turf without compromising some playing characteristics of the games. Therefore, full sport surface provision cannot be met without the use of natural turf surfaces, which also have an important role as green spaces in the built environment. Furthermore, a significant number of people participate in outdoor sport on natural turf pitches, although this is a declining trend as the number of synthetic turf surfaces increases. Despite natural turf being a common playing surface for popular sports such as soccer, rugby and cricket, few biomechanical studies have been performed using natural turf conditions. It is proposed that if natural turf surfaces are to help meet the provision of sports surfaces, advancement in the construction and sustainability of natural turf surface design is required. The design of a natural turf surface should also be informed by knowledge of surface-related overuse injury risk factors. This article reviews biomechanical, engineering, soil mechanics, turfgrass science, sports medicine and injury-related literature with a view to proposing a multidisciplinary approach to engineering a more sustainable natural turf sport surface. The present article concludes that an integrated approach incorporating an engineering and biomechanical analysis of the effects of variations in natural turf media on human movement and the effects of variations in human movement on natural turf is primarily required to address the longer-term development of sustainable natural turf playing surfaces. It also recommends that the use of 'natural turf' as a catch-all categorization in injury studies masks the spatial and temporal variation within and among such surfaces, which could be important.

Positioning and displacement patterns of young players during 5v5, 7v7, 9v9, and 11v11 soccer matches

“…Specifically, we found that the relationship between longitudinal and lateral movements was more balanced in the following configurations: age-group U8 <> 5v5 game format; U10 <> 7v7; U12 <> 9v9; and U14 <> 11v11, respectively. The more rounded shapes in the mentioned configurations reflect the similarity of movement amplitudes in the longitudinal and lateral direction, suggesting that the profile of the game in the respective configurations was more structured and collective from a tactical point of view (Bartlett, Button, Robins, Dutt-Mazumder, & Kennedy, 2012;Silva, Travassos, et al, 2014;Stiles, James, Dixon, & Guisasola, 2009). The relationship between longitudinal and lateral movements was not as balanced in the other configurations whose ellipse forms reflected a less balanced player-space relationship as well as a poorer player-function relationship according to specific areas of the pitch (Duarte, Araújo, Correia, & Davids, 2012).…”

“…These absolute positions were also used to define the Cartesian reference coordinate systems for each game format, with its origin placed at the pitch centre. GPS Longitudinal and latitudinal (spherical) coordinates were converted into Cartesian coordinates with the Haversine formula (Sinnott, 1984). Fluctuations in players positions were reduced using a moving average filter with a time scale of (.2 s) and data resampling was employed to synchronise the time series of all players within each match condition (Silva et al, 2015).…”

The perceptions of professional soccer players on the risk of injury from competition and training on natural grass and 3rd generation artificial turf

“…Currently, two types of surfaces are sanctioned by FIFA and UEFA for soccer competition at the elite professional level: natural grass (NG) surfaces, and artificial turf surfaces (including both 3rd generation and 4th generation) otherwise referred to as “Football turf” (FT) [2]. The main reasons for the introduction of artificial turf were to lessen the impact of environmental conditions on surfaces, to decrease the high operating costs associated with NG, and to increase field usability [3-5]. …”

Quasi-static mechanical behaviour of soils used for natural turf sports surfaces and stud force prediction

“…Recent studies in sports surface engineering have focussed on the relationship with injury and synthetic turf surfaces [1][2][3][4] as the number of 'third generation' longer-pile synthetic surfaces increases, in soccer in particular. For soccer and the majority of other 'winter field sports', the most common surface for play remains natural turf, however, and mechanical studies (beyond field measurement of traction and hardness) of natural turf are relatively rare, particularly in integration with sports injury or biomechanics studies [5].…”