David Healy labels Windsor Park pitch as 'borderline unplayable at times'
Linfield manager David Healy has labelled the Windsor Park pitch as “borderline unplayable at times” and believes improvements need to be made.
The state of the playing surface at the National Stadium has long been a talking point and it was once again on Wednesday evening after Healy’s men defeated Ballymena United 1-0 in the BetMcLean Cup semi-finals.
A number of Irish League pitches have been badly impacted recently – four matches scheduled to be played at the Ballymena Showgrounds in January, including two Irish Cup fixtures against Larne, were postponed.
Throughout this month, 15 fixtures across the Premiership, Irish Cup and BetMcLean Cup have been affected by weather.
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."