NO, says Gary Keown

FIRST things first. Any football club should be permitted to have a plastic pitch if they want one. They are businesses. They need to bring in money. In the absence of many other dependable revenue streams, artificial surfaces serve that purpose.

Scottish football, as if it had to be said, is hardly a land of milk and honey right now.

The second point is that the standard of artificial pitch is constantly improving. We are no longer talking about rock-hard surfaces where a kick-out from the goalie could threaten to invade the stratosphere on its first bounce.

Players will say they feel greater soreness after performing on plastic. If so, could we not look at changing the technology in football boots to cope with that? Marathon runners, after all, seem to be able to handle pounding up and down on tarmac for the entirety of their careers.

What people often seem to miss is that artificial playing fields may actually help produce better players. Isn’t that what we have been hammering on about in this country for the past 20 years?

Isn’t a flat, true surface a better place on which to perfect your skills than a ploughed field?

“It is much better to play on a good artificial than a very bad grass pitch,” said Ronny Deila, the Celtic manager, earlier this season. Sure, his team then went on to take a pounding from Molde on astroturf shortly afterwards, but that probably helped prove his point.

Molde are a much better team than Celtic, assembled on a fraction of the budget. Norway, as Deila confirms, is full of plastic pitches.

Mark Warburton’s complaints about a certain inconsistency in the standard of different surfaces is valid. Perhaps the type of artificial turf clubs can use should be restricted, but it should not be banned.

Of course, there has been talk of health concerns and not just in terms of injuries. There has been talk in the United States of a potential link between plastic pitches and forms of cancer. These have not been proven, as yet, though.

Research into the effects of plastic pitches on the welfare of players is welcome. However, unless it throws up hard, incontrovertible evidence, these fields should continue to be the future.

YES, says Neil Cameron

A FEW years ago, I dragged my failing, middle-aged body to the doctors to see if I could get a transplant.

I mean replacing everything. Head, legs, arms, the lot. Movement was difficult, walking near impossible and I was desperate.

The doc looked at me with some pity and revealed that many men, and a few women, of my age had similar complaints and he knew why. We had spent way too long running about plastic pitches playing football and that was just awful on your joints.

There wasn’t enough give in the surface, you see, and this is why those of us who began playing five-aside in the late 1980s struggle to get out of bed in the morning. The doc hated these pitches and said the very best were bad for even the most athletic.

So what then does it do to actual real players who, of course, are a lot fitter, but whose calves, thighs and hamstrings are more at risk to serious injury? It does an awful lot of harm that’s what it does.

Mark Warburton is against plastic, and that’s what they are, pitches, and he is bang on the money; cash being the reason why some clubs have AstroTurf, including Alloa where Rangers go on Saturday.

Players hate it. The come off after a game feeling sore, anyone with a dodgy muscle can’t go full title on it and you get really skint knees when you go in for a tackle. Apart from that…

Folk will tell you that the new 76G pitch is actually better than grass. When I hear that, I wonder if they are talking about what they’ve been smoking.

It is also said the grass pitches in Scotland, certainly at some of the smaller grounds, are not great. However, just about every last pro will say a bad grass pitch beats plastic every day of the year.

Warburton is right. There can be no more of these in Scotland and those already in place should be phased out, with the help of the SFA who have the money to assist their member clubs. Football was invented to play on grass. Brian Clough said that so it must be right.

What I will give Alloa is their decision to bring in the width of the pitch ahead of Saturday’s game with Rangers, which is not only funny, but a rather clever move. Anyone moaning about it needs to take stock.

Graeme Souness did the same at Ibrox before a European tie and it happens all the time.