White Hart Lane's movable football pitch in three pieces | Hacker News Reader

White Hart Lane's movable football pitch in three pieces

ingenia.org.uk

33 pointsfanf211 comments

At the very end of the article is a video explaining how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmeljNpIV1k

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.

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"

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.

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

Yet, they still play on Wembley

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.

> 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?

Wasnt aware of that distinction, thought it was just shifting the markings. In that case it does seem like mechanical engineering is the only way.

”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... 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...)

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.

> 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.

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