Close-up, the pitch looked very unnatural. As a spectacle, it was played at a real pace, and so I can see the attraction of it.



Watching it back on television, we complained about it at half time, with a lot of players having grazed knees. I was looking out for that during the second half, and there were a lot of players with visible grazes on knees and elbows, and more than one player with blood running from their knees.



Hmmmm. Not sure.

Said from day one that this pitch should not have being allowed in SL or any other RL stadium for that matter

Is it 100% fake? It looked it but I thought someone had said on here it was a mix of real grass too?!?

No thats Huddersfield I think?

it looks good on tv and the game was played at a good pace has others have said plenty of cut knees and elbows i reckon widnes will change there name to the widnes scabs after a dozen games on there.



the big issue for me was that players couldnt stop and turn on the pitch too good and there were at least two occasions when the ball took a very unusual bounce on both occasions it looked certain that tries would be scored had the ball followed its course.

Can't blame Mathers for the first try, the ball didn't half slow it's pace.

It's a rugby ball!! Unusual bounce is part of the game. If anything the ball should have bounced more 'normally' as the pitch is 100% flat.



The jury is still very much out on the pitch. It's obviously the focus of attention so last night in incredibly cold temperatures all grazes were put down to the pitch. Whose to say that these wouldn't have occurred on a normal pitch in the same freezing temperatures. It didn't get above 0degress all day yesterday over here with much colder temperatures during the darker hours of the day.



Likewise, the first injury that happens at our place will lead to more scrutiny.

I say give it a full twelve months and see how it goes.

In the same way that twice our players overshot a bouncing ball in a situation otherwise certain to lead to a try.

correct we was sat directly in line with mathers and in real time it made him look slow on the turn, watching it on the reply on the screen you could see his footing wasn't right to turn and clear the ball away



it looked a lovely surface but I wouldn't like to be playing on it

Thing about the pitch visting teams only have to play on it once and suffer a few grazes, Widnes have to play there every other week and train on the bloody thing. Should be banned and all pitches should be grass be they good or bad.

Dont know if it was the cold but most of the widnes team had long sleeves wonder if red elbows is a problem .I know some players wear them but nearly all the team did.

Go the Wakey website and go to the picture of Mathers and Southern celebrating. Click on it to make it big and check out the state of Mathers's knees and elbows. That is disgraceful from a pitch.