FA Chairman Greg Dyke officially opened a new 3G Artificial Turf Pitch at the Sussex County FA Headquarters in Lancing last week.

The ceremony saw children from the surrounding areas, as well as local disability side Langford Tigers, given the chance to play on the new surface and enjoy sessions run by The FA Skills team.

"This, for me, is what grassroots football is all about," said Dyke. "I think at grassroots [level] we will increasingly see football played on these surfaces, not exclusively, but they are so much more economical and make sense being lovely playing surfaces like this one.

"We all know local authorities budgets are tight, so they can’t maintain the grass pitches like they have done in the past, but if we can build more of these, like they did in Germany and Holland, then I think it will do a lot to help grassroots football."


Local youngsters enjoy an FA Skills session on the new 3G surface in Lancing. Photo TheFA.com

The project to transform the existing grass pitch to an artificial surface, at a cost of over £400,000 was funded by the Sussex County FA with the support of Barclays.

It took just 65 days from the first blade of grass being taken up, to FIFA inspecting the freshly installed surface, with the project handled by Surfacing Standards Ltd, Velocity Elite Sports Surfaces and Lano Sports.

"It’s fantastic that this project here has been funded with a loan from Barclays, and that’s given me food for thought as to whether The FA could help guarantee these types of loans, as opposed to giving the money," added Dyke.

"That way, we may be able to do many more of these quickly… it’s a very interesting idea and I applaud the Sussex County FA for demonstrating that this is possible and quite clearly that it works, as this is absolutely brilliant!"