Waterlogged Pitches and Drainage

The recent embarrassment of waterlogged pitches at the Adamansigba Stadium and Teslim Balogun Stadium have left me wondering about the state of football pitches in Nigeria. In the case of Ibadan after N5.6 billion was spent, couldn’t attention be paid to the pitch and didn’t the engineers know about a pitch drain? In modern football hybrid is the name of the game, even the grasses have become hybrid and the drainage system could be hybridized.

Currently this is the most frequently used drainage system in pitches. Plastic pipe drains are commonly installed with laterals at spacing between 5m and 10m centres at a depth between 450mm and 600mm below ground level. The plastic pipes can be wrapped with a porous material to prevent fine dust to enter it. All drains must be laid with a steady fall, no less than 1:150. When the drains have been laid, trenches must be backfilled with porous material to ensure the high percolation rates necessary for effective drainage. Predominantly single-sized, hard, angular gravel or broken stone within the range 6–10mm must be used as backfill. This should be brought to within 150mm–200mm of the surface. The trench backfill is then ‘capped’ with a 50mm ‘blinding layer’ in the form of coarse sand or fine grit to prevent infiltration of topsoil. The trench is backfilled to ground level with sand. So I wonder why the engineers didn’t install a pitch drain.

Rufai Oseni, rufaioseni@gmail.com