England's Allianz Stadium pitch has been rebuilt from the ground up
England host Australia at Allianz Stadium on Sunday 8 November, and the turf under their boots is almost entirely new.
The stadium, still known to many fans as Twickenham, had its playing surface relaid over the summer. The turf it replaced had been tended since 2012. BBC Sport reports that the job was overseen by Jim Buttar, England Rugby's head of grounds and technical operations.
The scale of the work was large. Around 9,500 tonnes of earth and grass were lifted out of the pitch. In their place went rolls of new turf, each 11 metres long and a little over a metre wide. Crews laid them in four days. The new grass was grown and harvested in Scunthorpe, about 200 miles away, before being driven down to London.
Underneath, the pitch now has a hi-tech reservoir that can hold 1.4 million litres of water. The idea came from a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands. Staff can move the water table, which is the level of water beneath the surface, to control how quickly moisture passes up through the turf. Faster movement helps with drainage, while slower movement helps the grass take in nutrients.
Water that is collected on the site is not wasted. It is treated with nanobubble technology, which fills the water with extremely tiny bubbles of air. According to BBC Sport, this helps the soil stay healthy, makes the turf more durable and stops the water from going stale.
The surface is now 93 per cent natural grass and 7 per cent plastic yarn. The previous mix was 97 per cent grass and 3 per cent plastic. The change is a small one on paper, but it is the kind of detail that shapes how a pitch copes with a long season of heavy use.
The new turf has already had a proper test. England Women opened the refreshed pitch with a win over New Zealand in September, a week after it was laid. Women's rugby uses the same ground as the men's game, and the result gave the new surface its first match.
The men's side has a busy few weeks ahead. England play Japan on 14 November and New Zealand on 21 November. Those games are part of the Nations Championship, a competition in which national teams play group-stage matches, known as pool matches, against opponents from their section. The Nations Championship finals then return to Allianz Stadium from 27 to 29 November. The top 12 Test teams, meaning the best national sides playing full international matches, will take part in double-header days, with two games on each day.
For supporters, the stadium's new surface will be most noticeable in the way the ball moves and the way the ground holds up as the weeks go on. The coming fixtures will show how well the turf works under pressure.
