Nanobubbles, hidden reservoir and hungry foxes: Twickenham's relaid pitch ready for autumn Tests
Jim Buttar, England Rugby's head of grounds and technical operations, oversaw the relaying of the Allianz Stadium playing surface at Twickenham over the summer as England prepare for autumn Tests and the Nations Championship finals in late November.
The existing turf and 9,500 tonnes of earth and grass were removed and replaced with rolls of new turf laid in four days; each roll measured 11 metres long and a little over a metre wide and was grown and harvested some 200 miles away in Scunthorpe before being transported to London. Jim Buttar says he wants a surface that supports "flowing, running rugby" and that a more open game spreads wear and tear across the pitch; "A 58-52 scoreline, one scrum and three line-outs all match, and we'll go home happy!" he tells BBC Sport.
The stadium moved away from a traditional sand base that shed water quickly because nutrition applied to the grass also passed through before it could take effect, and "with the price of fertilisers rocketing in recent years, Buttar knew better was possible." A fact-finding trip to the Netherlands led to the installation of a subsurface reservoir holding 1.4 million litres of water, allowing the ground team to mechanically alter the water table to prioritise either drainage or nutrition.
Captured water is reused and treated with nanobubble technology to aerate the supply and help maintain soil health and turf durability while avoiding stagnation. "We were looking for a more sustainable way of doing all things, while still being able to produce a world-class surface," says Buttar, describing the objectives behind the new system.
A week after the new turf was put in place, England women inaugurated the surface with a dramatic win over New Zealand in September, and post-installation assessments showed the new carpet — 93% natural and 7% plastic yarn compared to the previous 97%/3% mix — felt sturdier than its predecessor. Buttar cautioned there are many variables to manage and that early impressions do not remove the need for ongoing monitoring.
The autumn schedule will be busy: England face Australia on Sunday, then Japan and New Zealand on 14 and 21 November respectively, before the Nations Championship finals at Allianz Stadium from 27 to 29 November, when double-header fixtures will involve the top 12 Test teams on three successive days. "We are likely to be doing 14 or 15-hour days and that is just what it is," says Buttar, adding: "That finals weekend is a very condensed number of high-pressure games in a short space of time, but I'm actually looking forward to it, being able to really test yourself and all the planning that you've done."
Operational risks beyond wear and weather are also managed: Buttar outlined contingency plans for changing forecasts — "For the best part of four or five months of the year, we're dancing with the devil in terms of the weather," he said — and the ground team prepares a suite of fall-back options. He also enforces protocols to prevent sprinkler system failures mid-match, recalling that in a previous role at Tottenham's White Hart Lane he once arrived to find a malfunctioning sprinkle head had "blown a metre-wide hole in the centre circle," which he patched before television cameras noticed, and noting an unscheduled sprinkler activation delayed Birmingham's Premier League match against West Ham in November 2010.
Local wildlife presents further challenges: "There is a fairly decent urban fox population," says Buttar. "Post-match, as quickly as the cleaners can get everything cleaned up and get all the food waste away, they're going to come in roaming. "Sometimes the foxes will get their fill and then bury some for later. "We've found half-eaten burgers, pies and bits and pieces dug into the pitch. "Once we found an egg, perfect, with no damage whatsoever, which a fox had carefully put in a little hole and covered back up." Egg-burying or egg-chasing now occurs on what the article describes as one of the highest-tech surfaces in the world.
England's next fixture on the relaid surface is scheduled for Sunday 8 November, 15:10 GMT, with live commentary available on BBC Sports Extra and the BBC Sport website and app.