Council offers Ballymena Showgrounds update with 'agreements in place to upgrade surface'
Mid & East Antrim Council has confirmed “agreements are in place to upgrade the surface” at the Ballymena Showgrounds at the end of this season – and revealed “extensive work” has been carried out in recent days to improve conditions.
Four matches throughout January, including two attempts to play Ballymena’s Irish Cup fifth round tie against Larne, have been postponed at the Co Antrim venue as the grass pitch struggles to deal with poor weather.
The Sky Blues hosted just one Premiership match this month – a 2-2 draw against Cliftonville – and will now have to reschedule league matches with Glentoran and Portadown.
The quality of football pitches in Northern Ireland has been a talking point throughout January with 15 matches across the Premiership, Irish Cup and BetMcLean Cup postponed.
After recent struggles, it appears there’s light at the end of the tunnel for Ballymena United with work set to begin at the conclusion of this season.
In a statement to the News Letter, a spokesperson for Mid & East Antrim Council, who own The Showgrounds, said: "Current weather continues to be challenging in general however, maintenance has carried out extensive works in recent days to dry the surface out.
"Agreements are in place to upgrade the surface of the Showgrounds main arena pitch at the end of the 25/26 season."
It comes after Linfield manager David Healy labelled the Windsor Park pitch as “borderline unplayable at times”.
The state of the playing surface at the National Stadium has long been a topic of discussion and it was once again on Wednesday evening after Healy’s men defeated Ballymena 1-0 in the BetMcLean Cup semi-finals.
While no match at Windsor Park has been postponed in January due to pitch conditions – Wednesday’s cup clash was pushed back by 24 hours due to an amber weather warning brought by Storm Chandra – it has still come in for deserved criticism.
After a stalemate with Linfield earlier this month, Larne manager Gary Haveron blasted “the awful state of the pitch” and added “it’s dreadful for a national stadium”.
Northern Ireland won’t be in action at Windsor Park until later this year with their World Cup semi-final play-off against Italy – and a potential final should they reach that stage – being played away from home.
Healy has opened up on the difficulties of playing on their home pitch and believes the National Stadium should be leading the way when it comes to improving overall standards.
"The pitch is tough, it is borderline unplayable at times and that's no disrespect to Matt (Purcell), the groundsman who has been left on his own with no afterthought given, so that's disappointing," Healy told BBC Sport NI.
"I'm disappointed for Matt because it's not his fault, he needs a little bit of help and my question would be if there are international games in and around this period there's no way the pitch would be the standard it is at the minute.
"Gary Haveron was heavily critical of it as was Oran (Kearney) and Lee Feeney in recent weeks and that's frustrating because everyone is talking about improving everything, the infrastructure and pitches and if we can't as the national football stadium no one else can."