Injury facts alarming — so why does rugby persist with artificial pitches?
Wings wearing leggings for fear of abrasions and knee injuries 44 per cent more likely than on natural grass — players will live to regret playing on these surfaces
Through the years I’ve met a lot of rugby players without encountering one who liked playing on artificial pitches. I would go further. There hasn’t been one who didn’t dislike playing on them. More prone than most to saying what’s on his mind, Joe Marler said they should be outlawed. Jack Nowell was another who articulated how many feel. “I can’t stand them,” he admitted in an interview three years ago.
Pat Lam, the director of rugby at Bristol Bears, once complained that when they played on Worcester Warriors’ artificial pitch their players suffered worrying injuries. “I’m just talking facts. One guy got a knee injury just stepping and another guy a high ankle sprain, so he had surgery,” Lam said. “If you have a look, Toby Fricker [the Bristol wing] just went to step and his knee gave way.”
Those defending or even promoting the use of artificial pitches talk about the consistent nature of the surface. Admittedly they don’t cut up or, to put this another way, it’s only the players that cut up. “The cuts are brutal. It’s crazy. You get boys having skin grafts,” Nowell, the La Rochelle wing, said.
Defenders also claim artificial grass promotes high-tempo ball-in-hand rugby that creates a better spectacle. If this is so, why does the bounce of the ball seem as artificial as the surface? Why is it that sometimes you wince when seeing a player take a heavy fall on artificial grass? Why is it that the sight of a wing wearing leggings seems wrong?
Why do they wear leggings? Wings often score and may well have to dive for the line when running at full pelt. On an artificial surface there is a significant risk that in the act of diving, they will suffer nasty abrasions, hence the need to cover their lower limbs. Abrasions, of course, come with a relatively high risk of infection.
So, you’d imagine, clubs would be reluctant to go down the artificial road. Why ask your players to perform on a pitch that you know they’re not going to like? For the more ambitious, why use a playing surface that may deter the best players from joining your club?
Are rugby clubs turning away from artificial? Not at all. Ospreys in Wales are the latest to commit to an artificial pitch. From the start of the 2025-26 season, they will move to St Helen’s in Swansea. The local council has committed to investing in the stadium, subject to conditions. One of those conditions will surely be related to the availability of the pitch to the local community.
All fine and well for them, and Ospreys might not be able to afford the move without the council’s backing, but will the club’s players welcome this? Damn right, they won’t. Saracens, it might be argued, prove that artificial grass works. They moved to their StoneX Stadium, with its artificial grass pitch, in 2013 and won the European Cup in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Still, try to find a Saracens player who actually likes the surface.
For years there has been a feeling, expressed publicly by Lam and others, that artificial pitches lead to a higher incidence of injuries. Those on the other side of the conversation insisted that the science didn’t support that view. And it is true. Most of the research equivocated on the question, suggesting that there wasn’t much difference between real grass and the artificial kind when it came to injuries.
You can forget that notion, now. There is new and compelling evidence to the contrary.
The latest research relates to knee injuries suffered in rugby’s English Premiership over the 20 years from 2002-03 to 2022-23. Every knee injury suffered in that period was analysed as part of the research study — all 2,128 of them.
The findings were published on the British Journal of Sports Medicine website last October. Two of the paper’s 12 authors were the RFU’s chief medical officer, Simon Kemp, and one of the world’s best knee surgeons, Andy Williams. The authorship group also included physicians, physiotherapists, researchers, epidemiologists and governing body officials.
There were three key findings: 1) The incidence of knee injuries is high and the severity of those injuries is also high; 2) The number of injuries has remained stable relative to previous times but the severity of the injuries has risen significantly; 3) The incidence of knee injuries on artificial pitches during matches is significantly higher than on natural grass surfaces.
In the opinion of the authors,”significantly higher” translates as 44 per cent more likely to suffer a knee injury on an artificial pitch than on natural grass. This is a truly alarming statistic and confirms the worst fears of those who believe rugby should never be played on artificial surfaces.
Long term, the teams that play on these types of pitches will pay a high price for their choice. In the 20 seasons from 2003-23, the research paper says there were 105,000 days of player unavailability through injury. The mean recovery period for knee injures suffered in matches was 45 days. That’s 6½ weeks.
Given the now-established greater risk that comes with artificial pitches, will a great club such as Saracens be able to recruit good enough players to again become the best in Europe? In determining where they want to play, elite-level stars will factor in the playing surface of prospective clubs.
And here’s the thing that increases the significance of the findings. The researchers ran the numbers and found 71 per cent of knee injuries sustained in the Premiership over the past 20 years happened in matches, compared to only 29 per cent during training sessions. The game is clearly taking care of players’ welfare when training but during matches, little is controllable. The one thing that clubs could do is allow their players to play on the safest surface.
Gloucester, Newcastle Falcons, Saracens, Cardiff, Ospreys, Connacht and Ulster are now committed to playing their home games on artificial grass. They’ve all been sold a pup. And given the findings of this new research, shouldn’t all the rugby unions be warning those clubs considering artificial playing surfaces to first look at the science?
