Best management practices for sustainable and safe playing surface of Australian Football League sports fields
Craig Henderson, Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries
SurePlay is an R&D partnership led by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, collaborating with Horticulture Australia, AFL Queensland, Brisbane Lions, Irrigation Turfgrass Consultancy Group, Hortech Services P/L, University of Southern Queensland and St Margaret's School.
The project team, which includes government and university scientists, sports field and turf consultants, ground curators and AFL administrators, is investigating in a number of areas. These include:
- The development of standards, such as standards for hardness, grip, bounce and evenness, for AFL grounds so that they are safe and effective for play
- The development of cost-effective and simple ways to maintain a ground to these standards
- The development of training courses for groundskeepers and curators to encourage the implementation of best-practice.
Selected results
The project team has completed five rounds of benchmarking across twelve sports grounds since winter of 2003. At the same time, Nick Jeffrey (Brisbane Lions Head Curator) and his staff have been aerating, scarifying, fertilising, controlling weeds, and where available irrigating targeted AFLQ fields, to remediate them prior to and during the 2004 football season.
It was found that aeration, scarification and nutrition benefited the targeted grounds. In pre-season games and training, coaches and players commented that the grounds "look the best they have in ten years or more". By the end of the season, the fields held up very well, although this could be partially attributed to a very dry winter, and hence no games were played on muddy grounds. Mowing height was kept at 50 mm during the 2004 playing season, which some clubs felt was too high for optimal play.
Benchmarking measurements suggested that hardness, penetrability and excessive traction become problems in goal squares, centre squares and training flanks when they begin to dry out. Surface water content appears to be the major management factor for the manipulation of playing surface conditions and safety on many grounds. Interestingly, turf height and condition had little impact on measured hardness, although hard, compacted areas such as goal squares also had less desirable turf cover.
Other issues
The presence of tufted weed species (Eluisine indica and Eragrostis spp.) has been identified as a major cause of uneven playing surfaces. These weeds are particularly present in the compacted and worn areas in centre corridors and training shed flank.
Irrigation audits have found distribution uniformities to be moderate to poor on many grounds, due to under-performing infrastructure, variable town water pressure, and infrequent maintenance schedules. Future research will look at maximising benefits from limited, expensive water supplies.
Surface applications of crumb rubber is showing potential to reduce ground hardness, and improve grass growth and recovery in high wear areas.
The project is developing and promoting opportunities for the development of further industry training and accreditation packages.
For further information
This information was extracted from a document entitled "Overview of turf research at Queensland's Redlands Research Station", which was prepared by the DPI&F's turf research team. Contact GrowSearch Australia to talk to staff about how to obtain a copy (a fee will apply to cover printing and postage).
The SurePlay website provides ongoing updates on the progress of the project: http://sureplay.aflq.com.au
DPI&F Business Information Centre: Phone 13 25 23 (Queensland residents) between 8 am and 6 pm weekdays; non-Queensland residents phone 07 3404 6999; email callweb@dpi.qld.gov.au
Information contained in this publication is provided as general advice only. For application to specific circumstances, professional advice should be sought. The Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Queensland has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the information in this publication is accurate at the time of publication. Readers should ensure that they make appropriate inquiries to determine whether new information is available on the particular subject matter.
Last updated May 2005
