Rangers boss Steven Gerrard: Plastic pitches are ‘not safe’

Steven Gerrard has insisted that plastic pitches threaten the livelihoods of the country’s players and called on football authorities to get rid of them.

Rangers manager Steven Gerrard during training at Ibrox. Picture: Bill Murray/SNS

The Rangers manager gave the strongest denunciation of the surfaces in endorsing PFA Scotland’s player petition this week that called for these to be outlawed. The Rangers manager, who described the Rugby Park surface his team have played on twice in recent weeks as the “worst” he has ever “walked on”. And he cited the knee-ligament injury sustained by the Ibrox winger Jamie Murphy at Kilmarnock in August that has kept him out since as an example of players putting their careers at risk on synthetic surfaces.

“Your body just reacts differently to them,” Gerrard said. “Your joints ache for longer, your muscles are tired for longer. You can’t play your normal game, that you’ve been coached all your life. The ball doesn’t run true, it doesn’t bounce true. Games are not as good to watch on plastic pitches.

“In your mind, you think of the Jamie Murphy incident. You think of your family. Not all players are able to say, ‘I’m financially secure. My wife and my family are safe’. These are people’s lives, where they’ve got to survive and pay bills and support their families, yet you know that at any given moment you could be wiped out for a full season – and there are no guarantees for being out of football for a full season, how your career is going to pan out.

“All I ask is that owners and governing bodies think about people’s families and people’s bodies. I know because I played on them because they’re not safe. The worst I’ve ever walked on was Kilmarnock’s. I’ve never played on a good surface and I’ve played on all the latest ones and they’re all awful in my opinion.”