Long gone are the days of artificial football pitches that made it feel like you were playing on a car park.
So says Paul Fraser, the man who was part of the team that’s brought a state-of-the-art synthetic surface to Rugby Park.
The 41-year-old works for FieldTurf, who have rolled out high-spec pitches for the likes of Barcelona, Ajax and Everton in recent years.
And while the days of severe carpet burns are a thing of the past, the pitch expert insists that the technology has come a long way in decades gone by.
Speaking after the finishing touches were made to Kilmarnock’s new surface, Paul said: “We’re never going to get past the stigma.
“I travel across Europe and I would suggest that we are more backwards in the UK in accepting artificial turf than any other country.
“When you say artificial pitches a lot of people still think of that and skin burns. We’re a million miles away from that in terms of the soft plastic material we use now.
“It’s like trying to compare a Team INEOS racing bike in the Tour de France with a penny farthing. It’s non-comparable.”
According to Paul, Killie’s new surface is currently the highest level of artificial turf that you can get.
The team’s first artificial pitch was also laid by FieldTurf five years ago.
“Kilmarnock were quite specific in that they wanted an irrigation system put in, so obviously by adding a bit of water, it speeds the play up a little bit,” Paul added. “The original pitch at the time was a fantastic product.
“It still performed from a technical perspective, and they could’ve continued with that field for another season or two but obviously, visually because of the amount of use it had been getting, it was starting to look a bit tired.
“The club got a good five years out of the pitch and they wanted to upgrade to the latest technology and because they’d already had a synthetic field in there, obviously the costs were reduced when it came to replacing the top layer as opposed to digging up a natural grass pitch and laying a synthetic for the first time.
“So it was very forward-thinking from Billy Bowie; he wanted to embrace synthetic turf and he saw, from when the club put that first one in, the industry had moved on and there were even bigger and better things available to the club.”
While the new technology might be of the highest grade available, fans will be hoping that some of the Steve Clarke stardust will remain at Rugby Park this season.
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