Tales from Football History: Living in the Plastic Age
In the future, it was thought, we'd all be eating food in the form of pills, and by 1981 football was ready to ambrace the space age. This week, the story of QPR, Loftus Road, and plastic pitches.
Queens Park Rangers moved into Loftus Road in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, in 1917, but have given the impression over many of the 108 years since that they wished they were playing somewhere else instead. In 1931 the club left their home to play at the nearby White City Stadium, only to return to Loftus Road two years later, having made a then-substantial loss of £7,000.
Developments to the ground didn't seem to address the club's itch to leave for pastures new, though, and they left for White City again in the summer of 1962. But again the supporters didn't travel with the club, and with mounting losses and the team faltering in the middle of the Third Division, they again returned to Loftus Road again, this time before they'd even completed a full season away.
With a capacity of 93,000, it is simultaneously easy to see both why White City was such a tempting option in the first place and why such a move was also doomed to failure. It would only have taken the smallest illusion of grandeur, a common affliction of football club owners since the birth of the game, to imagine filling it and becoming the biggest football club in London.
But on the other hand, the reality usually turned out to be extremely different. Not only were small crowds at such a massive stadium ruinous for the atmosphere at matches, but this particular cavernous venue was only made all the more unappealing for fans by having a greyhound track encircling the pitch. Why would anyone want to watch matches in those surroundings? Smaller crowds and rent payments were something that QPR couldn’t afford in any way.
With crowds falling across the board following the post-war boom, that the project failed is hardly surprising, but Rangers fans looking back might wonder what the potential of the club might have been had Rangers had the money to both buy and redevelop the White City site as a more football-appropriate venue. The stadium was demolished in 1985, its greatest moment having come with hosting one match during the 1966 World Cup finals because Wembley was double-booked with dog racing.
This time, the message that White City wasn't going to work finally did seem to get through to the directors of the club. Promotion to the First Division in 1968 only turned out to last for one season, but it did lead to the construction of a new stand, and a near-miss four years later coincided with the building of another. The construction of the stand on the Ellerslie Road side of the ground in 1972 coincided with the beginning of QPR's Golden Era. Promoted back to the First Division the following season, they almost won the English League Championship in 1976, beaten only on the last day of the season by Liverpool.
But this new dawn turned out to be short-lived, and relegation followed again in 1979. By the end of the 1970s, football's economic future was starting to look somewhat bleak. Attendances had started to fall again, and other commercial revenue opportunities remained limited in a way that seemed implausible to modern eyes while transfer fees were starting to spiral.
Shirt sponsorship had only just been allowed, but it wasn't permitted for televised matches so was worth only a fraction of what it is today, and even television money was negligible for most clubs. Most relied on gate receipts–during an era when attendances fluctuated far more than they do now–and whatever other small commercial revenues they could find.
Loftus Road bucked the trend of decay of British football grounds throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bit-by-bit, it had slowly been redeveloped into a truly modern stadium. The final piece was put into place in 1980 with a new stand at the Loftus Road end of the ground, effectively a new stadium built on the side of the old over the course of the previous twelve years. But in the summer of 1981 came the most revolutionary stadium development of the era; the plastic pitch arrived.
The evolution of artificial surfaces for football can be traced back to an ill-fated attempt to play an indoor football tournament at Olympia under electric light and on an artificial grass pitch in 1906. The FA objected, but the commercial failure of the tournament ended the likelihood of anyone else wanting to repeat the folly in any case.
The pitch's more direct line comes, unsurprisingly, from the United States of America. Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, though, it came about thanks to a mistake. Major League Baseball arrived in the city of Houston in 1960, but the extremely hot and humid climate in the city meant that a planned new facility would have to have a roof on top of it.
With the contract to build the stadium given to the city's former mayor, Roy Hofheinz, the Houston Astrodome opened in 1965 with a natural surface. But the grass skylight panels on the roof had to be painted to avoid the glare of the sun, and this in turn meant that the grass didn't grow properly.
Unbowed, Hofheinz went to work with the chemical company Monsanto to instead create an artificial grass upon which sports could be played, and in March 1966 the new surface, named AstroTurf, made its debut. Its success was such that an outdoor version was soon developed, leading to it being installed at stadiums across the USA. By the end of the 1970s, it was also commonly being used in the North American Soccer League.
In the summer of 1979, Queens Park Rangers sent a delegation on a fact-finding mission to the USA in order to establish the viability of installing an artificial pitch at Loftus Road. The grass pitch there had been the cause of frequent problems in previous years, and an artificial surface could potentially increase revenue streams through near-constant use, as well as ending the headache that came with the grass pitch's poor drainage.
The club, however, decided not to go with AstroTurf, which needed to be replaced every decade and was already starting to be considered a somewhat outdated technology. Their preferred pitch was made using a system called Omniturf, which consisted of an artificial grass made from polypropylene fibre with a layer of sand underneath it.
It was already popular around the world. It was particularly used for tennis courts. It required less maintenance than grass, it was harder wearing than grass, and it would ensure that waterlogged or frozen pitches could become a thing of the past. For Chairman Jim Gregory and Chief Executive Ian Simpson had been looking for, it was a radical solution to their pitch woes; at a not insubstantial cost of £350,000 it was installed for the start of the 1981/82 season. The FA, of course, required a degree of persuasion, but they eventually agreed to allow its use for a trial period to run from 1981 to 1984. The pitch made its debut on the 1st September 1981 for a Second Division match against Luton Town.
By this time, Queens Park Rangers had a manager who was perfect for the role of selling the pitch's benefits to the broader football community. The former QPR Spurs and Chelsea player Terry Venables always fancied himself as something of a jack-of-all-trades, and amongst these skills he considered himself a bit of a novelist. In 1972 he had written a book called, coincidentally, They Used to Play on Grass, which imagined a future in which artificial playing surfaces had superseded grass completely.
Literary ambitions satiated, Venables went into management upon retiring as a player, but he left his first managerial position at Crystal Palace to drop a division to go to Loftus Road in October 1980, with Palace bottom of the First Division and in financial difficulty. His previously published novel lent credence to the idea that he was a true acolyte of the new technology, an impression further reinforced by media interviews on the subject that he gave at the time. He was the perfect salesman for such a pitch.
But Rangers' first League match on it did not go according to plan. Despite having won their opening game of the season at Wrexham the previous weekend, Luton were a little too smart for QPR and won the match at Loftus Road 2-1. Still, at least the day was a success in one respect for the club. Perhaps it was a revival of interest born out of curiosity at this apparent glimpse into the future, but the attendance that day of 18,703 was higher than anybody expected.
At the end of 1981 the plastic pitch was back in the news, when somebody broke into Loftus Road on Christmas Day and painted the words PERRY BUCKLAND IS INNOCENT onto the pitch. QPR had a home league match against Chelsea the following day, which had already been picked by London Weekend Television as their featured match for the Boxing Night edition of The Big Match. Such coverage was likely to be extensive too. The weather had knocked out all but eight other matches across all four divisions of the Football League that day.
QPR tried painting over the paint in green paint, but it didn't work. Those who'd broken into the stadium, however, had got their sides of the ground mixed up and had painted their message directly underneath the position of the main camera gantry, meaning that it was all but invisible to television viewers, apart from a few sporadic flashes. QPR's reward that day was a season-high crowd of 22,000 people and with graffiti more or less still visible on the pitch, but they lost the match 2-0.
Throughout the 1981/82 season, the argument over artificial pitches rumbled on. Those in favour saw the new pitch technology as a suitable replacement for grass, which increased clubs income to the extent that they could pay for themselves quite quickly, required less maintenance and could ensure that matches didn't get called off.
But it wasn’t long before the early curiosity and interest started to give way to substantial criticism. QPR had opted for the pitch that could withstand the heaviest use possible, but this in turn meant that the pitch was little more than a layer of polypropylene fibre sitting on concrete with only a thin layer of sand to cushion the bounce of the ball. Upon promotion to the First Division in 1983 the club added extra padding to try and dampen down this criticism.
In addition to this, it was becoming better understood that this extremely solid surface was bad for players' joints and was causing burns to players who had the misfortune to slide on them. More than anything else, though, there was a perception that QPR were gaining an unfair advantage by having an artificial pitch, being completely used to it, and being able to train on it all the time. They didn't get promoted at the end of the 1981/82 season, but they did reach the final of the FA Cup, where they only lost after a replay after a replay to Tottenham Hotspur.
Promotion the following year brought even greater scrutiny of this strange new pitch. QPR allowed other clubs to train on it in advance of matches, but the nature of the pitch meant that it often needed to be watered the night before, meaning that it sometimes played slightly differently on match days to even practice sessions held on it less than 24 hours earlier.
The Football League had sanctioned its use for League and League Cup matches, and QPR reached the final of the League Cup in 1986 before losing to Oxford United. But the FA were a different kettle of fish. They'd had reservations from the outset and had allowed it for the 1981/82 FA Cup competition, but there were question marks over whether they would do so again after the end of the trial period in 1984. As things turned out, QPR would be knocked out in the Third Round of the FA Cup away from home for the next four seasons in a row, so this never became an issue.
On the pitch, the team adjusted quickly to life back in the top flight and ended their first season back in fifth place, immediately above three of the ‘Big Five’ of the time, whose existence did so much to lead football in England towards the creation of the Premier League and where we are today. They finished the 1983/84 season ten points above Arsenal, eleven above Everton and twelve above Tottenham Hotspur.
That was good enough to qualify them for European football, but UEFA took a more intransigent attitude towards the Loftus Road pitch than the FA, and QPR were prevented from using it for European matches in the following year's UEFA Cup. In the First Round of that competition, they were drawn to play Iceland's KR Reykjavik and won the first leg 3-0 away, meaning that QPR's home European debut came at Highbury, in front of just below 6,200 people. The match ended in a 4-0 win; 7-0 on aggregate.
A Second Round draw against Partizan Belgrade didn't raise a great deal more interest and just 7,000 made the trek back across London for the first leg of that match in October 1984. Those that made the journey were well-rewarded, though. Rangers won the match 6-2, a result well surpassing the pre-match hopes of manager Alan Mullery, who’d told reporters before the match that he'd be happy with a two-goal win.
In the second leg, however, Mullery's young team received a rude awakening. Partizan raced to a 4-0 lead after just 64 minutes, and QPR couldn't find a way back. They were knocked out on away goals after a 6-6 aggregate draw. This extraordinary tie remains the club's last in European football.
By the mid-1980s, there was interest in artificial pitches elsewhere, as well. Luton Town became the second club to install one in the summer of 1985, but they would use a different surface, called Sporturfed Professional, which was manufactured by En Tout Cas. Luton would later be subject to considerable criticism over the condition of their pitch, and a 1989 commission confirmed that it had suffered excessive wear and tear and ordered it to be resurfaced.
A year after Luton Town, Oldham Athletic joined suit at Boundary Park. Oldham would later get promoted to the First Division and reach an FA Cup semi-final they had one. Preston North End would also have one installed at Deepdale in 1986, and the last installed pitch would prove to be the last to go in England; Deepdale's was finally ripped up when artificial pitches were outlawed altogether in 1994. Only non-league Hyde United were allowed an extension of one season so that they could replace theirs.
Queens Park Rangers’ flirtation with artificial pitches was long over by the time the FA finally pulled the plug on them all together. The club had found that making money from renting them out hadn't been as lucrative as they might have hoped, while the short-lived UEFA Cup run, played under the shadow of UEFA's ban, had been something of a cold shower for the club. In 1988, they spent £250,000 replacing their Omniturf pitch with a grass one again. Only three other League clubs had taken them up as well, meaning that those with artificial pitches always remained a tiny minority.
Time has not been particularly kind to Loftus Road over the years since the artificial pitch was removed. As developments in stadium design changed the face of the game in this country in the years following the Taylor Report, Loftus Road didn't seem to move much with the times. Talks of moving elsewhere came to nothing.
Football's stock market of the late 1990s boom crashed and the ITV Digital fiasco threatened the well-being of dozens of clubs. QPR found themselves in administration in 2001, with the formation of a Supporters Trust to fight suggestions that the club should sell the ground, or even decamp to Milton Keynes.
Fulham moving in while Craven Cottage was being renovated alleviated some of the worst of the club's financial woes. But erratic ownership over the last quarter of a century has more than once left Queens Park Rangers on the edge of a precipice, with even the chairmanship of Tony Fernandes unable to end this, as could be witnessed by the club’s FFP issues upon getting promoted to the Premier League in 2014.
But artificial pictures were always likely to make a comeback in some form or another. FIFA originally launched its ‘FIFA Quality’ concept in February 2001, while UEFA announced that, starting from the 2005/06 season, approved artificial surfaces were to be permitted in their competitions.
And in August 2005, the Dutch club Heracles became the first top flight club in Europe to have one of the new generation of pitches certified by FIFA and UEFA. In England, meanwhile, Maidstone United became the first English club to build a stadium with a third-generation artificial turf. The reasons for going with the synthetic turf were threefold.
To eliminate match postponements caused by waterlogging and freezing conditions (further down the pyramid, Tuesday night matches have long had far lower attendances than weekend matches; clubs literally cannot afford to lose Saturday matches).
The pitch can be hired out, bringing in vital funds for clubs smaller than Queens Park Rangers were in the mid-1980s. It’s been estimated that clubs can bring in around £150,000 profit per year, the 1985 equivalent to which might not have been worth that much to a top flight side, but is still valuable income to a non-league club in 2025.
To make the stadium a hub for all of the club's youth and community teams, which has been anecdotally noted to have a positive effect on bringing younger supporters through the turnstiles.
But there remains resistance in the professional game. The Premier League and the EFL still ban them. They’re not banned in the National League, but all clubs are understood to have signed an agreement that in the event of promotion to League Two, they would switch back to grass.
Not all of the criticism of these pitches comes on the basis of tradition alone. The PFA has identified that players have three primary concerns regarding their use. Increased fatigue, the increased likelihood of injury and the subsequent shortening of careers, and the more direct style of football that artificial surfaces are perceived to promote.
Its survey of players taken as recently 2018 found that 94% of them are against artificial pitches. There also remain concerns about their safety, and not just from the perspective of player injuries. It has also been suggested that there may be a link between the rubber crumb infill used on these pitches and cancer, with one young player, Lewis Maguire, who contacted Hodgkin's lymphoma while playing on them as a youth, describing the growth in their use as, “an industrial scale experiment on the health of our children”.
A 2006 study in the Netherlands found that some of the rubber crumb used in pitches in Holland had come from rubber pipes used in the petrochemical industry. But the FA has stated that it is satisfied with its rubber crumb and that it passes all safety requirements, the regulation of which is ultimately the responsibility of DEFRA and the Health and Safety Executive.
But on the other hand, FIFA President Gianni Infantino urged an investigation into the carcinogenic properties of rubber crumb in 2018 and said that, on balance, he would rather FIFA invested the $4 billion set aside for football development over the 10 years on natural surfaces. Developments in hybrid pitches which are fair harder-wearing than traditional grass pitches have also rendered them less relevant than they might have been.
In the four decades since artificial pitches were first introduced to football in this country, the debate over their use has hardly changed. On one side sit those who make them and those who have installed them, arguing their benefits. There is a practical need for clubs to maximise their income in an industry where they may only be properly open for business for one or two days a fortnight, nine months a year. It's a pragmatic response which has to treat the game as a means to an end, where the end is the bottom line of a spreadsheet.
And on the other sit those who prefer football to be played on grass, who are often painted as being traditionalists and little more. But then, it is reasonable and fair to have a preference, and concerns over the safety of these pitches may be valid, though it should be added that no formal connection has been made between the rubber crumbs, cancer or other illnesses.
That this debate should have been ongoing for over forty years speaks volumes about the way in which conversations concerning change still come about when it comes to professional football. It's a complex argument. Much of the last 150 years has been a tug of war between these two perspectives on the game, and as professional football continues to find flashier ways of bringing in even more money and innovation that many believe to be simply unnecessary, it's not an argument that's likely to vanish completely in the foreseeable future.
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