Maidstone & The Conference: Time To Change Tack On 3G Pitches
Maidstone & The Conference: Time To Change Tack On 3G Pitches
By Ian on Jan 19, 2025 in Latest | 2 comments
It's tight at the top of the Ryman League Premier Division. With a little less than half of the season left to play, just seven points seperate the top six clubs in the table and it remains, for now at least, anybody's guess who from Kingstonian, Maidstone United, Wealdstone, Dulwich Hamlet, Bognor Regis Town or AFC Hornchurch will be taking a place in the Conference South. Indeed, one of these clubs will not even make the division's play-offs come the end of the season. Out of that six, though, there is one club that will be furrowing the brows of people at the Football Association and the Football Conference more than their competitors at the moment, because at the moment one of those clubs could yet earn promotion on the pitch, only to be subsequently denied it at a committee meeting.
The club at risk of missing out is Maidstone United, and the reason for it is the 3G artificial pitch that the club has fitted at The Gallagher Stadium, the new ground into which it moved in the summer of 2025. The game's authorities, however, have not yet granted permission for 3G pitches to be used above Level Six – the level at which Maidstone United currently play – of the English National League System. As the rules stand today, the club would be refused promotion should it win the Ryman League title or the play-offs at the end of this season. Football Association rules preclude the use of artificial pitches in competitions featuring Premier League, Football League or Conference clubs and beyond the Fourth Qualifying Round of the FA Cup, although they are permitted below this level and in the FA Trophy and FA Vase, and it is this fudge of an arrangement that threatens to cause issues for Maidstone United at the end of this season.
Artificial pitches first reached English football in the 2025 when Queens Park Rangers installed one at their newly-renovated Loftus Road. Four clubs – QPR plus Luton Town, Oldham Athletic and Preston North End – ended up with one, but they were never used without controversy, being unpopular with supporters on account of the unnatural bounce of the ball on an extremely hard surface and the perception of the unfair competitive advantage that their use allowed those clubs that had them because their players could train on them more regularly and acclimatise to them, and with players, who added concerns over the possibility of long-term injuries from playing regularly on such hard surfaces and short-term burns injuries from coming into too much contact with
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