Special grass being laid at Dunedin stadium

  • Breaking
  • 27/04/2011

By Dave Goosselink

Dunedin's Forysth Barr Stadium has been billed as the world's first permanently enclosed, natural turf stadium.

And while the grass appears to be growing, with the World Cup fast approaching stadium bosses are hedging their bets and reinforcing the natural turf with the synthetic GrassMaster system.

The machine uses giant needles to sew artificial fibres into the ground. The blades are drilled down 20cm deep and  intertwine with the grass roots. That helps anchors the turf, creating a tough and long-lasting pitch.

"You can play a lot more hours on it if you compare it to a regular practice field," explains Jan Gooiker from Desso GrassMaster. "Normally you play about 400 hours and then the whole grass is gone."

Two GrassMaster machines will be operating 20 hours a day for the next fortnight. They will be injecting 48,000km of synthetic thread into the ground - that's more than enough to wrap right around the Earth.

Dunedin's the first in Australasia to install the system, which is already used in 350 stadia worldwide.

The real test of the pitch will be at an expected trial match in August, before the World Cup kicks off in September.

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source: newshub archive