
White Hart Lane's movable football pitch in three pieces - fanf2
https://www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/a57524c7-215a-484d-9ffb-94c16030f3fc
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Gys
At the very end of the article is a video explaining how it works:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmeljNpIV1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmeljNpIV1k)

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djaychela
That's really interesting (and an amazing piece of engineering), but I'd like
to have seen more detail on how the rails in the underlying NFL pitch are
hidden/appear - the engineering of them alone (to hold the weight of the turf
pitch) must be immense.

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handelaar
Video isn't very clear on this but it _seems_ to infer that the artificial
pitch below must either:

a) be itself also split into strips which space out sideways to reveal rails
just below the surface, or

b) be removed entirely as an unshown step between "NFL" and "rails are
exposed"

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Someone
So, why do they have to cut the field in three pieces? Lack of a football-
field-sized-and-shaped space outside the stadium? Doesn’t look like the
reason, looking on iOS Maps (which has newer imagery than Google Maps for me);
the new field is almost a full pitch length south of the old one so they could
slide it away (but not fully out of the new stadium) to the position of the
old field.

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edh649
I believe it's to do with support columns under the stands. The outer third
set of the pitch move outwards before retracting.

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pbalau
Yet, they still play on Wembley

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goldenkey
Why not just use projectors or LED tiles to change the game being played?
Seems like mechanical engineering is a bad abstraction for this problem.

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chrisseaton
> Why not just use projectors or LED tiles to change the game being played?

Use projectors or LED tiles to do what?

The problem is American football is played on artificial grass, and
Association football is played on real grass. No amount of projectors or LED
tiles will switch between those two, will they?

> Seems like mechanical engineering is a bad abstraction for this problem.

How do you change artificial grass to real grass without any mechanics?

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Someone
_”The problem is American football is played on artificial grass, and
Association football is played on real grass.”_

Not necessarily.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_National_Foo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_National_Football_League_stadiums#List_of_current_stadiums)
shows about half of current NFL stadiums use natural grass or hybrid surfaces.

Also, association football is played on artificial surfaces, but not, I think,
in the Premier League. Tottenham seems to play on a hybrid surface, though
([http://www.dessosports.com/sports/football/football-
projects...](http://www.dessosports.com/sports/football/football-
projects/tottenham-hotspur-whl-stadium-uk))

A big reason to have multiple surfaces is that one wants to use the stadium
frequently. A NFL match would cause too much wear and tear on a grass surface
to have a quality surface for a soccer match a week later, for example. It
also takes weeks to remove the NFL logo from a natural surface.

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chrisseaton
> Not necessarily.

I didn't say it was necessary. I said that's what they're doing. At this
stadium they play Association football on grass, and American football on
artificial. If they want to swap between them then they need a mechanical
system to do so.

