Yeah, I know, I told you all I was going to write a Whitecaps post on every #WhitecapsWednesday. Well, I didn’t. I moved last week, so I unpacked my kitchen and living room instead. But here we go, only a day late (and hopefully not a dollar short), with this week’s Whitecaps Wednesday post.
Whitecaps captain Jay DeMerit’s 2013 campaign is likely to be about eight minutes long. He made the starting lineup of last Saturday’s season opener against Toronto FC after presumably being medically cleared and telling the coach he was good to go. Eight minutes into the game, however, DeMerit landed awkwardly and ruptured his achilles tendon, probably ending his season. The captain’s preseason had been a short one as he had reportedly been nursing some inflammation in, you guessed it, his achilles tendon. Although Vancouver’s prospects remain fairly bright thanks to the off-season additions of Brad Rusin and Johnny Leveron, there has been a fair bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth in Capsville.
Many fans have pointed the finger squarely at number six, saying it was selfish of him to start against a weak TFC team knowing he was still not 100%. Others say Marin Rennie should have held DeMerit out of the lineup, even though there’s no evidence that he had information suggesting DeMerit was anything but ready to play. Still others point at nobody in particular, but see this as further evidence that BC Place’s artificial turf surface is going to negatively impact the club’s performance. The first two groups have been addressed at length elsewhere, and it seems to me that a debate about who was at fault is pointless unless new information comes to light indicating someone knew the player was unfit but forced him to play anyways. The third group, those that insist that artificial turf is the culprit, are the ones I’d like to address.
Artificial turf has been around for 40+ years now, and a lot of the information surrounding it is horribly out of date. Early artificial turf surfaces such as AstroTurf were, indeed, risky to play on. When you throw a green carpet on concrete and tell people to dive onto it at full speed, you should probably expect an increase in booboos. (I believe that’s the technical term, anyway.)
Surfaces these days are much more advanced and much closer to real grass. Players playing on these new surfaces suffer injuries at a rate that’s statistically identical to the rate at which players suffer injuries when playing on grass. Here’s a study on the issue from the National Institutes of Health. That study’s objectives: “To compare the incidence, nature, severity and cause of match injuries sustained on grass and new generation artificial turf by male and female footballers.” And its conclusion: “There were no major differences in the incidence, severity, nature or cause of match injuries sustained on new generation artificial turf and grass by either male or female players.” Read it for the details… it’s all scientific-like and stuff. Strangely, the technical term ‘booboos’ doesn’t appear even one time. Weirdos.
Another well-researched article here found that while there was a higher incidence of overall injuries on artificial turf, players tended to pick up more minor knocks like turf toe and carpet burn on artificial surfaces, while grass surfaces yielded a higher incidence of both 1-2 day time loss injuries and 22+ day time loss injuries.
I’m pretty sure that injury-based arguments against artificial turf are just confirmation bias by people already opposed to turf (or just pro-grass*). If you have information that says otherwise, I’d love to hear it. Please let me know in the comments.
*No matter what Ross Rebagliati might say, there are no indications that the Vancouver area produces better grass than other homes to professional soccer.