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Home advantage wasn't an accident for Jeff Beck, the Cambridge United manager in the '90s because he used groundsmanship as a weapon: - plough the pitch to kne

Home advantage wasn't an accident for Jeff Beck, the Cambridge United manager in the '90s because he used groundsmanship as a weapon: - plough the pitch to kneecap expensive teams with running/passing games - narrow the pitch dimensions to minimise fancy wide plays - grow the grass long and pour sand in the corners so long balls less likely to go out He then recruited the tallest forwards he could and the strategy was simple, hoof it to the big fellas up front. None of this running/passing nonsense that requires money/talent. I expect regulations might have improved since then...

gadders 1y ago
I don't think test cricket is quite as bad, but pretty sure wickets are prepared to suit certain bowling styles.
ignoramous 1y ago
Broadcasters rule football. Even if there was no regulation, the broadcasters would be absolutely livid if their audience wanted to see the best players & top clubs play tiki-taka but were served smash & grab. The Premier League & the Champions League are money spinning ventures for a reason. What you say still happens in International Cricket, but not usually for club tournaments like The 100 or the Indian Premier League.
- smcl 1y ago
  The broadcasters have absolutely no say whatsoever in how a groundsman prepares their pitch for an upcoming fixtures. In fact the kind of gamesmanship we are talking about happened as recently as the last few games of the most recent English season. Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry they had a one-goal advantage going into the home fixture. Coventry had a player Milan van Ewijk who was able to deliver a very long and precise throw-in, so any throw in Sunderland conceded within 20-ish yards of their own goal would basically be like conceding a corner (a set-piece seen as a good goal-scoring opportunity). Sunderland mitigated against this by shrinking the distance between the touchline and the advertising boards at the side of the pitch, shortening the distance van Ewijk could run prior to taking his throw-in, and stunting his ability to turn it into a goal-scoring opportunity.
  - ignoramous 1y ago
    > Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry Feel for Frank, but this wasn't the top clubs & best players playing in the Premier League.
    - smcl 1y ago
      It was a very high-profile example of exactly this type of shenanigans during a live game picked up by the biggest broadcaster in the country, which will have been watched by millions across the world. The claim was that this simply isn't allowed happen, and it literally happened. I don't even particularly like the English leagues, but this is a daft thing to brush off
      - ignoramous 1y ago
        > millions across the world Debatable playoffs have the same reach as PL & CL matches between top clubs. > daft I don't doubt that the home team may make changes to their advantage, but I don't think the broadcasters would particularly like it if the pitch absolutely destroyed any chance at good entertainment. In International Cricket, the equivalent would be preparing the pitch to the home team's strengths (which went horribly wrong for India, the home team, in the 2023 World Cup Final, which was as drab as they come).
- mfro 1y ago
  Consider the recent Club World Cup final and semi-finals, hosted on an American football field with shitty SIS pitch. I saw more slips from players in the semi-final than I've ever seen in a single game.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    None of those field issues were due to home field gamesmanship though. That was shitty US planning and conversion of NFL stadiums with turf into temporary real grass fields. Comparing the two shows a total stretching of the storyline. Yes, the CWC fields were embarrassingly bad. Has nothing to do with TFA though
    - ta1243 1y ago
      Are the world cup pitches going to be better?
      - dylan604 1y ago
        doubtful, but maybe they can learn from this experience. it's managed by USSocer, so I don't have a lot of faith.
walthamstow 1y ago
Norwich painted their away dressing room an effeminate shade of pastel pink because it supposedly lowers testosterone
- kibwen 1y ago
  Reminder that the association of pink with femininity is a recent phenomenon. Before WW2, it used to be associated with masculinity. 'In 1918, an article in Ladies Home Journal advised: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”'
  - bleuarff 1y ago
    Interesting. Any source on why/when the switch happened?
    - jonhohle 1y ago
      There’s a claim that it was a marketing scheme in the 1940s to reduce the usefulness of hand-me-downs in families. My grandmother would have lived through that and I may see if she remembers anything about it. She was definitely babysitting or watching children by 1940.
      - potato3732842 1y ago
        That doesn't make sense to me US textiles were in high demand, though perhaps not in pink and blue starting around 1940 and by the end of the decade US consumers were getting quite wealthy. I'm not saying it didn't happen but I'd like to see a better reason than "companies love money" since if you loved money in the 1940s there were better ways to get it than trying to do some sort of marketing campaign to reverse a social standard (using a marketing industry that was much less advanced and pervasive no less.)
        1y ago
jazdw 1y ago
The Goodison Park (built 1892) away dressing rooms are really Spartan and uncomfortable. They are poorly heated, are right under the stand (noisy), there's only one toilet etc. I don't think Everton's home record can really get that much worse when they move into their new stadium next season though.
- sjm-lbm 1y ago
  Some of the All or Nothing documentaries that cover Premier League teams include a lot of footage in the away dressing rooms, and they are almost all bad (though Goodison was weirdly cavernous and looks more annoying than normal). Exactly how they are bad changes, though - when you take the Emirates Stadium (Arsenal's home ground in London) tour, for instance, they actually include some details about how the table in the middle of the away dressing room is designed to be uncomfortably high in a way that keeps team members from making eye contact, which is something that the stadium designers thought would be annoying. At one point, at least, the self-guided tour narration actually included a comment that Pep Guardiola hated the layout.
- tj-teej 1y ago
  I toured Stanford Bridge in the middle 2010s, they actually found uncomfortable away dressing rooms weren't the most effective as it either got the other team to go out and start warming up or riled them up. When Mourinho started he brought in a sports psychologist who made the dressing rooms slightly heated with light pink walls and a comforting atmosphere. They ended up going 2+ years without a loss at home after that.
fiftyacorn 1y ago
Stoke city too - had the narrowest field and used tall forwards combined with ex-Javelin thrower Rory Delap
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
pmontra 1y ago
I do think that smooth grass fields (I mean billiard-like smooth) greatly help teams with the best players that can pass ball with no mistakes so those points #1 and #3 were probably very effective at closing the gap to the top teams. Every stadium in every major league around Europe has a smooth field of grass now, that's one of the reasons for having less and less surprises at the end of the year.

gadders 1y ago

I don't think test cricket is quite as bad, but pretty sure wickets are prepared to suit certain bowling styles.

ignoramous 1y ago

Broadcasters rule football. Even if there was no regulation, the broadcasters would be absolutely livid if their audience wanted to see the best players & top clubs play tiki-taka but were served smash & grab. The Premier League & the Champions League are money spinning ventures for a reason. What you say still happens in International Cricket, but not usually for club tournaments like The 100 or the Indian Premier League.

smcl 1y ago
The broadcasters have absolutely no say whatsoever in how a groundsman prepares their pitch for an upcoming fixtures. In fact the kind of gamesmanship we are talking about happened as recently as the last few games of the most recent English season. Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry they had a one-goal advantage going into the home fixture. Coventry had a player Milan van Ewijk who was able to deliver a very long and precise throw-in, so any throw in Sunderland conceded within 20-ish yards of their own goal would basically be like conceding a corner (a set-piece seen as a good goal-scoring opportunity). Sunderland mitigated against this by shrinking the distance between the touchline and the advertising boards at the side of the pitch, shortening the distance van Ewijk could run prior to taking his throw-in, and stunting his ability to turn it into a goal-scoring opportunity.
- ignoramous 1y ago
  > Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry Feel for Frank, but this wasn't the top clubs & best players playing in the Premier League.
  - smcl 1y ago
    It was a very high-profile example of exactly this type of shenanigans during a live game picked up by the biggest broadcaster in the country, which will have been watched by millions across the world. The claim was that this simply isn't allowed happen, and it literally happened. I don't even particularly like the English leagues, but this is a daft thing to brush off
    - ignoramous 1y ago
      > millions across the world Debatable playoffs have the same reach as PL & CL matches between top clubs. > daft I don't doubt that the home team may make changes to their advantage, but I don't think the broadcasters would particularly like it if the pitch absolutely destroyed any chance at good entertainment. In International Cricket, the equivalent would be preparing the pitch to the home team's strengths (which went horribly wrong for India, the home team, in the 2023 World Cup Final, which was as drab as they come).
mfro 1y ago
Consider the recent Club World Cup final and semi-finals, hosted on an American football field with shitty SIS pitch. I saw more slips from players in the semi-final than I've ever seen in a single game.
- dylan604 1y ago
  None of those field issues were due to home field gamesmanship though. That was shitty US planning and conversion of NFL stadiums with turf into temporary real grass fields. Comparing the two shows a total stretching of the storyline. Yes, the CWC fields were embarrassingly bad. Has nothing to do with TFA though
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Are the world cup pitches going to be better?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      doubtful, but maybe they can learn from this experience. it's managed by USSocer, so I don't have a lot of faith.

walthamstow 1y ago

Norwich painted their away dressing room an effeminate shade of pastel pink because it supposedly lowers testosterone

kibwen 1y ago
Reminder that the association of pink with femininity is a recent phenomenon. Before WW2, it used to be associated with masculinity. 'In 1918, an article in Ladies Home Journal advised: “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”'
- bleuarff 1y ago
  Interesting. Any source on why/when the switch happened?
  - jonhohle 1y ago
    There’s a claim that it was a marketing scheme in the 1940s to reduce the usefulness of hand-me-downs in families. My grandmother would have lived through that and I may see if she remembers anything about it. She was definitely babysitting or watching children by 1940.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      That doesn't make sense to me US textiles were in high demand, though perhaps not in pink and blue starting around 1940 and by the end of the decade US consumers were getting quite wealthy. I'm not saying it didn't happen but I'd like to see a better reason than "companies love money" since if you loved money in the 1940s there were better ways to get it than trying to do some sort of marketing campaign to reverse a social standard (using a marketing industry that was much less advanced and pervasive no less.)
      - 1y ago

jazdw 1y ago

The Goodison Park (built 1892) away dressing rooms are really Spartan and uncomfortable. They are poorly heated, are right under the stand (noisy), there's only one toilet etc. I don't think Everton's home record can really get that much worse when they move into their new stadium next season though.

sjm-lbm 1y ago
Some of the All or Nothing documentaries that cover Premier League teams include a lot of footage in the away dressing rooms, and they are almost all bad (though Goodison was weirdly cavernous and looks more annoying than normal). Exactly how they are bad changes, though - when you take the Emirates Stadium (Arsenal's home ground in London) tour, for instance, they actually include some details about how the table in the middle of the away dressing room is designed to be uncomfortably high in a way that keeps team members from making eye contact, which is something that the stadium designers thought would be annoying. At one point, at least, the self-guided tour narration actually included a comment that Pep Guardiola hated the layout.
tj-teej 1y ago
I toured Stanford Bridge in the middle 2010s, they actually found uncomfortable away dressing rooms weren't the most effective as it either got the other team to go out and start warming up or riled them up. When Mourinho started he brought in a sports psychologist who made the dressing rooms slightly heated with light pink walls and a comforting atmosphere. They ended up going 2+ years without a loss at home after that.

fiftyacorn 1y ago

Stoke city too - had the narrowest field and used tall forwards combined with ex-Javelin thrower Rory Delap

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pmontra 1y ago

I do think that smooth grass fields (I mean billiard-like smooth) greatly help teams with the best players that can pass ball with no mistakes so those points #1 and #3 were probably very effective at closing the gap to the top teams. Every stadium in every major league around Europe has a smooth field of grass now, that's one of the reasons for having less and less surprises at the end of the year.