Twickenham's £1m new pitch

13 April 2012

Twickenham, the most famous rugby pitch in the world, is due to be ripped up this summer and replaced with a £1m surface.

The home of the English game is starting to look like a patchwork quilt after the most seriously damaged areas of the pitch were relaid for last weekend's Six Nations championship game against Italy.

The surface will receive futher batterings over the next two Saturdays when Twickenham hosts the Tetley's Bitter Cup Final on Saturday and the Calcutta Cup clash with Scotland a week later.

England kicking star Jonny Wilkinson told Standard Sport on Monday that the heavily cut-up pitch was the reason he failed to achieve a perfect 14 out of 14 attempts at goal against Italy. His final kick sailed wide because he could not find a flat area to use.

It cost £750,000 to re-turf the pitches at Loftus Road and Vicarage Road, where football and rugby are able to use the same surface without serious wear and tear. That kind of technology will now be utilised by Twickenham which, because it has a bigger playing area, will push the price up to £1m.

But the outlay is not guaranteed to solve the problems, as Old Trafford and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff prove. The multi-million pound building work undertaken at both venues has required expensive corrective work.

It is understood the work at Twickenham could go ahead in the summer due to an unexpected windfall. The Tetley's Bitter Final, one of the matches that will further damage the pitch, is expected to add £1m to the Rugby Football Union coffers thanks to a record 71,000 attendance.

A near sell-out crowd was not part of the financial projections for this year and the extra income can be used to help give the stadium a pitch it can be proud of again.

John Clarke, the clerk of works at Twickenham since 1982, admits the new horseshoe-shaped stands have made caring for the turf much tougher.

He said: "The pitch has done pretty well over the years but it's struggling a bit at the moment.

"Having rebuilt the stands, we have cut down ventilation and sunlight and bad weather has tipped the balance. New technology has a real part to play but grass won't grown in unventilated shade, as other stadiums have discovered."

The situation this season was not helped by the late arrival of a new £156,000 pitch cover. It was supposed to be ready for use at the start of the season but was missing when the heavy rain fell in November and December.

Meanwhile, English rugby is set to reap a possible £10m bonus with a new three-year deal from Tetley's Bitter to sponsor the national knock-out competition. Tetley's hope to annouce the new deal early next month.

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