He may not be the biggest fan of artificial pitches, but St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright maintains the synthetic surface at Station Park should not be a factor in Saturday’s Scottish Cup tie.
Forfar’s state-of-the-art 3G pitch lies in wait for a Saints side looking to put last weekend’s League Cup semi-final disappointment behind them, although the Loons will be hoping to use home advantage to pile more misery on to the Perth men.
Many teams have found it difficult adapting to plastic pitches but Wright insists his players should have no fears ahead of this weekend’s fifth round tie.
Seeing off Hamilton in style on the surface at New Douglas Park in the third round of this season’s League Cup should stand them in good stead.
“Playing on the plastic pitch is not really a problem but I think we’ve maybe got players who are better suited to it than others,” he said.
“So we’ll look at that and that might come into play when I’m going through the team-selection process. I’ve no problems with them or us playing on them, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist and I think the game should be played on grass.
“I know the logic behind them, economically as well, but anybody who says it’s not different and that it’s the same as grass.it’s not.
“But we’ve coped with it quite well at Hamilton, so we’ve no qualms about the surface. I thought we managed to get the ball down and pass it against Hamilton so that should suit us.”
Wright is quick to stress that he is not a critic of synthetic surfaces as such, and is certainly not levelling any criticism at Station Park, but feels the apparent proliferation of plastic pitches needs to be managed in the right way.
Forfar’s surface is newer than the one at Montrose’s Links Park, for example, while the ones at the likes of Hamilton and Alloa are different again.
Wright continued: “They are changing all the time.
“The thing about them is that you can have the best grass pitch at the start of the season but, if it’s not maintained right, it soon deteriorates. It’s the same with plastic pitches and I see that as a problem further down the line.
“I don’t know what the ruling is at the minute with the Premiership, but I do see it as a problem.
“It’s OK if it goes in and it’s top notch, but the maintenance to keep them at the level that they should be I think is something that needs to be looked at as well.
“I know there’s quite a few in Scotland and I think there’s quite a few back home in the league in Northern Ireland and there is a difference between each of them almost.
“One of the reasons is that they’ve been put in at different times, as technology has got better they’ve got better, and the other thing is about how they are maintained.
“It’s like everything else if they are not maintained well, it soon deteriorates and doesn’t fit the purpose it’s meant to.
“We’ve played on them before, we’ve used them regularly, but I’m just saying if it’s going to be done long-term it’s not just a case of putting one in and that being it.”
Following the League Cup loss to Aberdeen, Wright reckons Saturday’s game and the chance to reach the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup is a great fixture for the players to come back to.
“If the fixtures were reversed and we were going to Celtic this weekend on the back of what happened on Saturday, it would have been a tough call,” he said.
“Of course this is still going to be a tough call and in any game, if you are not right, you end up getting punished.
“We just need to make sure we are right.”
Meanwhile, striker Michael O’Halloran staked his claim for a start in Saturday’s tie by netting a double in the under 20s’ 3-1 win over Aberdeen at Methil on Tuesday.
Bradley Fortnam-Tomlinson scored the other in a match that saw James Dunne get his first run-out in a Saints jersey.