No, I’m not talking about the fans! but the fact that, as a professional club, we don’t seem to be able to find a grass pitch to train on in the area from December to March.
I’m genuinely starting to think that it’s a reason for this slump. Is training on the Fairfield’s all-weather surface hurting us? Are players training all week trusting the surface and their weight of pass being perfect, but then arriving on a grass pitch (home or away) and just not adapting to “real” football? It sounds ridiculous but so much of playing good football is muscle memory and doing things instinctively that it’s feasible to think that players just aren’t adapting in matchday scenarios, i.e. when that simple five yard pass only travels four, or a pass that you can ping to feet at Fairfield’s, takes a longer to get there and takes a bobble, or losing that desire/instinct to make that perfectly timed sliding tackle because you just aren’t doing it Monday to Friday on the plastic?
I can’t recall the last time I saw a training pic on club socials that wasn’t on the Astro, and it certainly ties in with the time period our form has fallen off a cliff. I’m not saying it’s the sole reason, but in the struggle to find answers to why we’ve been so poor, everything has to be considered.
It used to be an occasional thing, this training on plastic for us; Woughton a bog and they’d go in the dome there. Now it’s a seemingly permanent winter thing. It’s embarrassing for the club, and I wonder, if it’s something Lyndsey is holding his tongue over?
And let’s not mention the heightened risk of impact injuries from training on it, or the risk of breaking a rib
