Football governing body FIFA and its hockey counterpart FIH, have published performance and construction guidelines for synthetic turf pitches that can be used for both football and hockey.
Recognising the benefits multi-sports fields bring and seeing the opportunities that the new innovative types of synthetic turf being developed to address environmental concerns offer, FIH and the FIFA Innovation team investigated if these surfaces can be used successfully for hockey and grassroots football on dual sport fields.
This yielded positive results which, according to FIH, “creates new and enhanced sporting opportunities for many”. By introducing the new guidelines, FIH is hoping that it can piggyback on the popularity of football and the willingness to invest in a football surface, in areas where hockey is growing but still lacking the support to invest in a hockey specific surface.
FIFA Basic
The new FIH Dualsport Pitches for Football and Hockey – Performance and Construction Guidelines combes the performance criteria of the FIFA Basic category of field certification and updates the FIH Multi-sport category of hockey turf.
The guide describes the performance, durability and construction requirements for dual use hockey and football pitches. It provides performance and quality criteria details for these new types of surface, along with guidance on the levels of hockey and football that it is envisioned will be played on the pitches.
To aid those designing dual-sport pitches, the guide also provides information on pitch dimensions and layouts, the appropriate construction standards, and field certification.
FIH President Tayyab Ikram said: “It truly is fantastic that both the FIFA Innovation team and FIH were able to collaborate for the mutual benefit of grassroots football and hockey. This guide will provide a great help to millions of young football or hockey players around the globe. On behalf of hockey’s global community, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to FIFA, and especially its President, Gianni Infantino, for joining forces with us.”
Synthetic turf pitches play a substantial part in the development of both sports worldwide. They enable accessibility of wider communities and society to sport, and are a great platform to demonstrate our sustainability efforts.”
Short pile turf
The growing trend of short pile synthetic turf surfaces for football was fundamental to the document. Turf carpets with a pile height of 30 to 45 mm provide a much better ball roll for hockey than what was experienced on the 60mm with SBR infill carpets from the past.
With the help of the Football Foundation, England Hockey and Sport England, the concept was trialled at the Leicester City Hockey Club in the UK.
The surface is intended for use for grassroots community football or hockey or training as well as lower-level school football or hockey (training).
Product approval testing is based on methodologies developed by FIFA, but incorporate FIH performance criteria. It can receive an FIH product approval providing it has been supplied by a FIH licensee. Product testing needs to be undertaken by test institutes accredited by FIH while field testing needs to be undertaken by test institutes accredited by FIH and FIFA.
The end of 3G
With the new guideline in place, FIH Plans to phase out the approval of 3G (rubber filled ) multi-sport surfaces from the end of 2025. Current products will no longer be approved. New fields built completed after the end of 2025 will not be certified. However, existing certified fields can be recertified.