Plastic

[Rifleman Harris]

Sorry to derail the thread a little, but Wuss use coconut husk, could be a potential alternative.

That's nuts!

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[Vespula Vulgaris]

Sorry to derail the thread a little, but Wuss use coconut husk, could be a potential alternative.

That's nuts!

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You're milking this for all it's worth!

[Rifleman Harris]

I'm doing my best. I'll stop now.

I would wonder on the longevity of coconut. Also you would still get airborne fibres.

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[Vespula Vulgaris]

I'm doing my best. I'll stop now.

It wasnt a dig, I was joining in!

[Rifleman Harris]

Ofcourse...I didn't realise until I'd posted the last message! My brain is desiccated at this time of night!

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[Vespula Vulgaris]

Ofcourse...I didn't realise until I'd posted the last message! My brain is desiccated at this time of night!

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I just thought you were shy!

[NellyWellyWaspy]

No increase in injury prevalence between grass and artificial.

Is that a total for all sports, or just Rugby Union?

The impressions some Rugby Union related studies have done is that the number of injuries does indeed not seem to have increased, but that there is a marked increase in the number of serious burns, and also the type, nature and severity of injuries has increased.

[BG]

I think the comment I read or heard related to the possible health concerns regarding the rubber crumb (I think its been banned in some european countries in various sports).

I wonder if anyone has done a long term analysis of injuries across the 3 different playing surfaces. The problem is, many factors go into causing an injury so its going to be very hard to quantify results.

Most players, when asked, seem not to enjoy the experience of playin on the fully plastic pitches.

[Garuda]

My mom will be pleased. My six year old trains on an artificial pitch on Sunday mornings after which we go straight to my mom's for a Sunday dinner.  My lad takes his kit off when we arrive and those little black bits get absolutely everywhere.

[Raggs]

Love playing devils advocate in this area as I’m doing some research in playing surfaces.

No increase in injury prevalence between grass and artificial.

Lots more game time that can be played on artificial.

Community benefits...

Agree that the rubbercrumb is a bit crap and any innovation away from it would be hugely celebrated.

Can't believe there's no increase in the number of burns... or are we talking "serious" injury only?

They definitely have a place, massively useful.

[mike909]

From the Irish Time re injuries - note in link caveat - my bold

Synthetic pitches
The RFU crunched the numbers on grass and synthetic pitches in Premiership rugby, and came up with a report after the 2016-17 season.

It said that for that season 608 injuries were recorded on grass, 170 on artificial surfaces. With just three pitches the exposure to plastic was less, but returned injury rates of 129.1 per 1,000 hours compared to the grass rate of 89.6 per 1,000 hours, the total hours representing 25 matches. The average severity for match injuries on grass was 32 days, compared with 37 days for artificial turf.

As stated in the official report: “The overall burden of injuries on natural grass was 2,481 per 1,000 days compared with 4,740 per 1,000 days on artificial turf, a staggering difference.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/staggering-amount-of-injuries-on-4g-pitches-compared-to-grass-1.3641369

Certainly there would appear to be a case to keep monitoring

[backdoc]

The 'gutfeel' is that knee ligament injuries are more severe due to the fixation of the foot on the surface.

[AKWasp]

So my statement doesn’t tell the whole story-

Yes more burns on artificial
Yes more serious injuries on artificial (but days lost think is still no different)
And all sports show similar numbers

Only seen one study that showed rugby players are 3x more likely to get an ACL injury in artificial compared to grass but still no difference in overall incidence

More muscular injuries on grass, more ligament on artificial

Been quoted that RFU report before but don’t think it’s published scientifically (apologies if I’m wrong)

No research into soreness though which is a huge complaint from players