Story by Red Sports reader Jonathan Leow.
The St Andrew’s village family will officially open their new artificial rugby pitch on Friday, January 11, 2008. The pitch is located within the St Andrew’s Secondary and Junior School compounds, and is believed to be one of the first locally designed primarily for rugby.
The artificial surface comes after eight months of fitting and renovation of the school’s previous grass field which is shared with St Andrew’s Junior School. The previous field was constantly in need of maintenance and re-turfing, which led the management of the Village to look at other alternatives which would allow high usage and year-round play.
The Saints are believed to be the first school locally to adopt a surface which is specifically designed for rugby, with longer blades of artificial grass and a softer base layer to cater to the demands of the contact sport. Raffles institution and Temasek Polytechnic are two other schools which currently have artificial pitches, but these are hybrid surfaces with shorter blades of grass to allow playing of both soccer and rugby. The Saints will be one of the first outside of Hong Kong to have this surface. Currently the Hong Kong Football Club has the same surface, and since 2005, they have hosted International Rugby Board-sanctioned matches and tournaments.
The new pitch would not have been possible without all stakeholders involved, especially the old boys who have bought into the idea, says Principal Mrs Belinda Charles. “Old boys are very proud that their vision of St Andrew’s Village has at least been partly responsible for this happening. While MOE has provided us the major part of the funds for the field, it has also been with the funds raised by our Old Boys that we have been able to add non-standard extras such as night lighting.”
The pitch is currently undergoing various approvals so that the upcoming National Schools Rugby Championship games can be played on it.
In conjunction with the St Andrew’s focus on hockey as well as rugby, a purpose-built hockey training area with an artificial surface is being constructed next to the rugby pitch.
An opening ceremony will see ex-Singapore rugby captain and current Singapore Cricket Club Vice President Leow Kim Liat, an old boy, open the field at 3:45 p.m., after which there will be two “Past vs Present” games featuring Saints old boys in the Under-35 and Over-35 category playing against the Saints B and A division teams.
someone clever: you arent smarter talking this way. grow up and out of your shell
if there is something saints are good at, thats talking nonsense.
Raffles artificial turf is solely made for rugby too, the blades of the grass is the same as the saints blades. I have been to both turfs.
Also, according to our first writer who complains about getting abrassions, let me make it clear that in every artificial turf u play rugby in, you are going to get abrassion. Your body has to get used to the truf before you can aoid such abbrassions.
p.s. ACS field is only for soccer even though they were first. (small grass blades)
saints old field was like a quarry, with potholes everywhere so its a good thing they changed it
saints talk cock.
The acs pitch is overused by too many games and trainings – and they fill holes with sand!
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An artificial turf is actually a good long term investment because too much time and money is needed to maintain a grass field over the longer-term. Schools are in the business of education, not maintaining grass.
Golf clubs can do it because it’s their bread and butter business. Man Utd change their grass at Old Trafford within months or weeks because they can afford to and have to. Their grass doesn’t grow properly because the structure doesn’t let in enough light in the winter months.
So anything that allows our schools to have a good flat field that doesn’t turn into a mud bowl when it rains makes sense. In ten year’s time, the pitch will look exactly the same.
To Fred – the writer indicated that St Andrew’s is building an artificial pitch for hockey. They will not be playing hockey on the rugby pitch.
The artificial pitch in ACS(I) is probably put in as a multi-purpose pitch for recreational purposes. The main pitch is reserved and preserved for rugby, hence it’s excellent condition. You can see that they do not allow the students to play on it for the fun of it. They only do so on the artificial pitch. So I don’t think they have been conned.
When you have a school with hundreds of boys, you got to let them play somewhere or else they will drive the teaching staff bananas with their hyperactivity.
It not about who have the turf first or second neither who have played official games first. It’s about providing for the future generations a place to play the sport they want. This argument can go on and on but it can never be resolved. Instead, we should try and provide a safe environment for everyone to play and enjoy.
There are as usual a number of incorrect statements being made – by both the writers here and Saints – Point 1 – the turf at Saints and at ACS has yet to be approved a rugby suitable (ACS was in 12 months ago and not 2 years) – neither has been approved – Point 2 – Why do ACS need to go to artificial turf when the maintenance of their grass field appears to be far superior to any other rugby field in the Country and as such there is no need to move to the artificial field. Point 3 – It would appear that when ACS put the field in their management failed to consult anyone and as such the dimensions are not fit for any sport – for rugby it is too small and unsafe, Soccer and Hockey the grass blades are too long. so it is in fact a white elephant – Point 4 the Raffles field will not be approved for usage as a rugby field as the grass baldes and base surface do not comply with the standards required – our first writer is apparently correct in his statement when he says players are being injured at Raffles field – It has been reported that as many as 5 players per game are being injured due to the lack of grass and the hardness of the base surface- Congratulations to Saints – however hockey will not be played at top level on a rugby approved surface – so the rugby will have the ground to themselves – some of the management have been conned when they think that other sports can play competition games on the surface – As a member of Hong Kong Club – the reason the field is underused is exactly that – the surface is not good enough for Internationals , and no other sport can use it – The MOE may well be spending 500,000 per school to get this going in the hope that more sport will be played – good luck !! A multi purpose artificial surface can not get approval for all codes – and that means that sports may well use the artificial turfs for training – but competiton sports will not.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/322019/1/.html
looks good. My school new town sec has made a new field too, but it is waiting for confirmation for usage from the MOE.
Hi Neutral ,
ACS did have the 1st artifical pitch, but to date no official games have been played on it, and it is similar to the rj and tp fields – more for soccer than for rugby!
hey.just would like to say that it was Anglo Chinese School Independent who first had the artificial field.it was up since 2 years ago if im not wrong!
so true.. so guys prepare your guards!
Players should prepare their joint guards. As a player, i played on Raffles’ artificial field and I got insanely bad cuts on my joints area (suchs as knees and elbows). So pain, you scared of showering.