Earlier this month, the association of engineers KIVI Oost visited the stadium of soccer club Heracles for a presentation of their new artificial grass. Heracles is one of five European clubs to be subsidized by the UEFA for this experiment.
`This is without doubt the future! I think within ten years we'll be holding the World Cup on artificial turf!' exclaims Heracles's trainer Gert-Jan Verbeek, who was skeptical a year and half ago. Today, he discards the objections of other coaches against artificial grass as unrealistic: `They're talking from their heart: it's tradition. Times change. My players prefer playing here over playing on natural grass.'
Martin Olde Weghuis, who works at artificial grass producer Ten Cate Thiolon and one of the three managers of the UT institute Sport & Leisure, provides twenty students with some technical background: `We don't just provide the textile blade. The performance comes from the whole system.' The floor is in total 60 cm deep. `The drainage is perfect,' trainer Verbeek says. `8000 liters of water in 10 minutes is no problem at all!'
`Perception is also very important,' Olde Weghuis explains. `Just after we had installed the grass, people started complaining: the grass wasn't green enough. Consequently, we removed another five tons of rubber.' The Ten Cate representative shows a presentation sheet with terms like grip, linear friction and rotational friction. The grass was made slide-proof and fire safety was also an issue. `We tested it with torches from the P category: 1400 degrees Celsius. When those fall on the grass, they just smother.'
Then it's time for the KIVI members to test the grass themselves. Business Administration student Marc Brummelman plays goalkeeper and does a nice long fly on the soft ground. `When I got here, I wasn't very enthusiastic about artificial grass,' he explains, `but now my esteem has increased by a few points.' No, he is not yet a KIVI member. `I haven't finished the preliminary stage of my program yet, so I'm not allowed to join. I'm big soccer fan, so tagged along with friends who are members.'
`I still miss the smell of grass,' sigh two other participants, Wendy Botjes and Nancy Telleman.
`You can do your thesis on artificial grass,' concludes Arjan Hobbel, program director of KIVI Oost. He agrees with Verbeek, who says: `We don't have any injuries, we're very fit and have a good chance at getting our PhD.' Is Hobbel suggesting that a research assistant make artificial grass a scientific object? Indeed, Olde Weghuis (Sport & Leisure/ Ten Cate) divulges: `We're thinking about starting a Master's program Sports Engineering at the UT'.
Trans. Jeroen Latour
