Wembley Stadium: the "Super Pitch" of American Football
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Wembley Stadium ready for more than 80,000 British football fans in August. Wembley Stadium: "Super Pitch" of American Football fyou ask a British sports fan to name portion of the crowd may be sipping tea and the most famous American stadium, nibbling bisquits, the more vociferous fans Ihe'd probably say Yankee Stadium. are likely to be downing pints of ale. And If you ask an American sports fan to name naturally, the best seats in the house are the most famous British stadium, he'd say permanently reserved for the Royal Family. Wembley Stadium. Four years ago, the In 1984, Ralph Miller, the sales and pro- American probably would have had a hard motions manager of Wembley, thought it time even thinking of the name of one British would be sporting for the "Yanks" to bring facility. The National Football League (NFL), over two NFL teams for "a little exhibition" the international press and two groundsmen of American football for British soccer and have changed all that. rugby fans. The British Broadcast Corpo- For 51 weeks of the year, the pitch and ration (BBC) had introduced the sport to surrounding dog racing track at Wembley pubs across the Isle by telecasting the Super are sacredly British. More than half of the Bowl. The patrons of these pubs were int- stadium's 100,000 capacity crowd stands rigued by the rugged but strategic nature throughout rugby and soccer matches and of the game. They began to organize dog races. They can't sit down, they don't amateur and semi-pro teams with their pubs have seats-just a place to stand. But they as sponsors. do have a roof overhead to protect them American brewers saw it as an opportu- from the daily rainfall while the players on nity to expand the market share of their the pitch get soaked. products in the thirsty nation by support- Bookies take bets as they walk through ing the growing popularity of football. With Sam Monson the stands like hot dog vendors. While a some encouragement from Anheuser- 20 sporlsTURF Busch, St. Louis Cardinal owner William Bid- well agreed to treat his team to a trip to En- gland. Mike Lynn, general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, thought it was appropri- ate that the Vikings, with their European roots, make a symbolic crossing of the At- lantic to show the British a thing or two about football. At first the NFL wasn't sure how it would treat such exhibition games. It has very definite rules on how many pre-season games an NFL team can play. The NFL's job is to ensure that all teams derive equal benefit from revenues generated by the league. William Granholm, assistant to the presi- dent of the National Football Conference, explains, "It's expensive for two teams to send 80 players and all their training and coaching personnel to England for a week. The teams needed a way to defray some of their costs. So the decision was made to allow them one extra pre-season game for their troubles." The teams were ready to go, but Wem- bley Stadium wasn't. It had one of the best pitches for rugby and soccer, but it had no experience with American football. It rare- Goal posts for American football had to be installed before the first game in 1984. ly had more than four days to convert the pitch from one sport to another since it was labor-intensive," Monson describes. "Where There was nothing Monson could do to so heavily booked. American expertise was we would use a 72-inch riding triplex reel improve the spectacular ryegrass turf. Eu- required if the event was to succeed. mower, they would take three hours to cut ropean groundskeepers had learned the su- The Cardinals play on artificial turf at the pitch with a 3D-inch walk-behind reel periority of the improved perennial ryegrass- Busch Stadium, as do the Vikings in the mower that catches the clippings. We'd use es for sports fields years before the idea Metrodome. But, the Vikings headquarters a boom sprayer for spraying for weeds, in- took hold in the U.S. Gallagher was a leader and training center in Eden Prairie, MN, had sects or diseases. They use three or four in their implementation. He was also a leader a state-of-the-art natural turf field under the guys with backpack sprayers. Instead of in the use of high sand content soil. The care of facility supervisor Sam Monson. pushing the turf with a pound of nitrogen Wembley soil was 80 percent sand mixed When Monson heard the Vikings might be per month, they use moderate rates of slow- with cinders, peat and native loam. The dark going to play the Cardinals in Wembley, he release fertilizers. Where we'd use automatic mix warms with only minimal sunshine, asked Lynn if he could go to help out on in-the-ground irrigation, they take hours to drains well enough for most rainstorms that the field marking and preparation. By say- water the field with hoses or ocassionally venture inland from the Atlantic Coast, and ing yes, Lynn started a relationship between a portable sprinkler. It's a whole different can be spread just as easily as sand for top- Monson and the groundsmen at Wembley attitude about labor." dressing and divot repair. that is entering its fourth year. Monson wanted to give the British fans It rained nearly every day the week be- It wasn't that Don Gallagher, head a pitch that was as dressed up as the Su- fore the game. Monson quickly learned that groundsman at Wembley in 1984, was a per Bowl fields they had seen on the "tel- British groundskeepers don't have tarps. "If novice at turf management. He was an in- lie." The Wembley crew never had the oc- continued on page 22 stitution in England, clearly one of the top casion to paint large multi-colored shields groundsmen in the country. After 15 years and logos on the pitch in all its 80 years at Wembley, he knew everything there was of operation. "All they ever used was a white to know about the perennial ryegrass pitch chalky emulsion and a walk-behind liner," and how to help it recover from all types Monson adds. "They were accustomed to of sports and concerts held on it. Since it rain washing the chalk off the field during is the largest stadium in England, it is used a game. The idea of using a latex paint was for all types of events. The pitch endures not something they had ever considered as the ripping and tearing of cleats during proper, since a soccer game might be fol- serums, the huddle-like formations in rug- lowed by a rugby match the next day. by, the fancy footwork of soccer players, American football had never been played the dancing of punk rockers during concerts, in Wembley. The single-post goals had never and the rowdiness of soccer fans who oc- been erected on the pitch before. One of casionally pour out onto the pitch after a the first jobs Monson had to do when he match. Gallagher had discovered precise- arrived in London a week before the Au- ly how to repair the pitch after all these gust game was to install four-foot-square events with sod from Wembley's own nurs- concrete footers for the goal posts. To ac- ery, frequent overseeding and a good pitch- complish this the Wembley crew had to dig forking. out large holes in both goal areas, pour the If someone slipped and called his pitch footers, and replace the soil and sod in time a field, Gallagher would quickly explain, "A for the game. Except for one day every Au- field is where cows eat ... a pitch is where gust, the Wembley fans are unaware that sports are played." the foundations of American football lie "Sports turf management in England is beneath the surface of their pitch. Tingley wanted to paint the NFL logo himself. July, 1987 21 over the project and build the event up over numbers, hash marks and the four-foot-wide a five to ten year period." sidelines ready for Monson. The NFL took more than a year to exa- After going to so much detail to dress up mine all the aspects of staging the Wem- the field, Monson did not want rain to wash bley exhibition game. In 1986, when they away his hard work. He won a compromise were ready to try again, all the chemistry from Tingley that he could use diluted la- was there. The Dallas Cowboys, the John tex paint for the emblems and logos. For Waynes of American football to the British, the white lines, Monson mixed the Snow- and the Chicago Bears, the colorful mis- cal chalk with white Mautz latex paint. As fits pubgoers related to, were paired off. This a result, the designs weren't as bold as the time the press, both national and interna- Super Bowl, but they were just as large. tional, got behind the contest all the way. The week before the game, it rained very It was like a volcano preparing to erupt. little. Conditions for painting were perfect. When Joe Rhein, NFL director of oper- Tingley spent hours working with Monson ations, checked with Wembley about the learning as much as he could. When the arrangements for the pitch, he learned that teams practiced on the field the day before the groundscrew respected the easy-going, the game, the pitch was perfect.