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The Etihad Stadium surface has been in a worrying state all season, but things thankfully took a turn for the better yesterday with the AFL conceding the turf needs to improve and stadium management agreeing to address issues stemming from Friday night’s big draw between St Kilda and Hawthorn.
But what took so long? And why did the AFL Players Association also choose yesterday to speak out against the surface, and not earlier?
Up until now the AFLPA has been quiet on the issue, while the AFL and Etihad Stadium have been keen to play down any problems.
It’s all very strange because it should’ve been obvious well before this week that the surface is full of issues and has seen far better days. Friday night was merely one example backing up this notion, albeit a pretty powerful one.
The Herald Sun have reported that there were 20 incidents where “players inexplicably lost their footing” during the game. Two of those incidents saw players end up injured.
But this is nothing new.
Already this year we’ve seen the hamstring injuries of Nick Riewoldt and Josh Gibson linked to the surface. We’ve seen footage of unexplained slips showing up on a seemingly weekly basis. We’ve seen the famous Shaun Higgins ankle injury. Yet, astoundingly, we’ve also seen both the AFL and stadium management play down all of these events.
“That Etihad Stadium’s surface is contributing to hamstring injuries, that’s complete baloney, complete nonsense,” said Andrew Demetriou earlier in the year.
“I could make an argument to say that there are injuries that happen at lots of grounds,” said Demetriou after the Higgins incident.
“The way (Higgins) placed his foot on the ground, if it hadn’t have divoted, he might have broken his ankle,” said stadium boss Ian Collins only last week, while also blaming injuries on players wearing the wrong boots.
No one with any sort of power to do anything has been willing to admit there’s a problem until now. It’s been truly remarkable.
Certainly, the role of the AFLPA has to be brought into question. That they didn’t speak up earlier about what is essentially a player welfare issue raises so many questions. Did the AFL tell them to keep quiet?
It’s not hard to get that impression. After all, AFLPA chief Matt Finnis looked like a dog let off the chain yesterday with the comments he was feeding the media.
He said games may have to be moved, he said the surface was as bad as he’s seen it, he said it could lead to legal action from players, he said it was unacceptable for the modern game.
Of course, before yesterday, he said barely anything about the whole issue.
At any rate, now the focus turns to whether yesterday’s words can be backed up with action. For mine, Etihad Stadium will always have difficulties. It will never be perfect. A large reason for this is its lack of exposure to the natural elements.
However, we’ve all seen the ground in better shape than it is now, so we know it’s possible. What would be great to see is some consistency.
Wayne Carey spoke yesterday about the troubles of playing at Etihad Stadium, and it’s hard not to agree with him.
“The thing that’s upsetting everyone … is that it is slippery in some spots and not so slippery in others. The players are wearing mouldeds, people are saying ‘well, you should be wearing screw-ins and then you won’t slip over’ but then there’s parts of the ground that are far too hard to be wearing screw-ins,” he said.
“If the whole ground’s slippery, players can cop that, and I think even spectators have to say ‘well okay, the whole ground’s slippery, players, wear screw-ins and be done with it’.”
Perfection may be unattainable for Etihad Stadium, but surely getting a consistent feel all over the ground is not. Let’s hope we can see that before the 2011 season rolls around or, more importantly, before there’s another injury.