Are They Ready For Some Football?
The Nats won’t be the only team playing in RFK. Despite playing in relative obscurity--which is a shame because they’re DC’s only good team--the DC United soccer club will be sharing the stadium. They’ve revealed how they’re going to make it work: rolled-up sod.
Large clay-backed turf will be rolled on and off the field as needed. They had considered trays of grass. I can remember they tried that in the Meadowlands for the Giants and the Metrostars and it failed miserably. The grass just couldn’t hold up in the trays--it kept ripping up.
They claim it will take two days to switch TO soccer and three to switch back to baseball.
With the lengthy road trips baseball teams take, it shouldn’t be too difficult squeezing in the thirty or so games they play.
Large clay-backed turf will be rolled on and off the field as needed. They had considered trays of grass. I can remember they tried that in the Meadowlands for the Giants and the Metrostars and it failed miserably. The grass just couldn’t hold up in the trays--it kept ripping up.
They claim it will take two days to switch TO soccer and three to switch back to baseball.
With the lengthy road trips baseball teams take, it shouldn’t be too difficult squeezing in the thirty or so games they play.
posted by Chris Needham at
8:57 AM
2 Comments:
DC United hardly play in relative obscurity, unless you mean "obscure to the TV viewer." In fact, in recent years United has had better per-game attendance than either the Wizards or the Caps. DC United is the second-biggest draw in DC sports, after the Redskins. They'll soon be third, after the Nationals, but if you measure things in terms of the number of people who care enough to actually watch games, soccer has a higher profile than basketball or hockey in DC.
Of course, sports producers, reporters, and editors tend to be of a distincly anti-soccer mindset, but fans vote with their tickets, and they vote for DC United.
By
Anonymous, at 12/23/2004 11:03 AM
Soccer fans tend to have a chip on their shoulder regarding the status of their league. Hockey fans sometimes are the same way.
Regardless of their attendance, DC United are relatively obscure. Pull 10 people off the street and 9 of them aren't going to know they just won the League.
That's the fault of the media not covering them, despite their success on and off the field. Of course, some would make the argument that that's the market speaking. If people cared more about soccer, they'd get more coverage.
By
Chris Needham, at 12/23/2004 11:08 AM
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