In many ways, the newly laid turf at Royal Athletic Park is the centerpiece of the preparations for play in Group F of the 2007 FIFA Under-20 World Cup. And Gord Smith, superintendent of parks operations for the City of Victoria, frets over his little green baby like a doting parent. He need not worry as the turf got rave reviews yesterday. It actually looks like those British and European soccer stadium fields you see on highlight reels shown on Fox World Sports.
With most of the other five groups for the World Cup based at big-time venues -- such as Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Frank Clair Stadium in Ottawa and the new BMO national soccer stadium in Toronto -- RAP needed the most upgrading of the six sites in order to be brought up to World Cup standard.
"When we were here in March [for the Team Canada-Scotland friendly at RAP], I never would have believed this transformation was possible and that the field would be in such condition," said Archie Knox, manager of national youth teams for the Scottish Football Association.
"There's been an astonishing change to the stadium. It's fantastic. All credit to the organizing committee. It took a lot of hard work and a real team effort to do something so exacting as this pitch. It will give the World Cup games their due justice. Hopefully, we'll see good games on it -- and ones in which Scotland wins."
The three 2007 U-20 World Cup venues in the west at Victoria, Burnaby and Edmonton are natural grass and the three in the east at Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are FIFA-approved synthetic turfs. You know which variety the soccer purists prefer. The west wins on that count.
But natural or synthetic, every team in each of the six groups in cities across Canada gets one practice session on the actual game surface before their group play begins. Japan and Scotland trod on RAP's new field yesterday and Nigeria and Costa Rica will get their turn today.
Tomorrow they play for real as Group F opens with Japan meeting Scotland in the CBC nationally televised fixture at 2:15 p.m. It will also be shown live in Scotland on BBC and live in Japan on Fuji-TV. That's followed by 2005 U-20 World Cup runner-up Nigeria playing Costa Rica at 5 p.m. before what is expected to be a capacity crowd of 11,400 at RAP for the doubleheader.
Gord Smith, proud papa of the pitch, will be holding his breath. He wouldn't let the goalies into the crease areas yesterday -- to prevent wear and erosion -- and so the goals were moved in and the Japanese and Scottish squads practiced on a short field.
"The crease areas are always the biggest concern," said Smith.
When the real goals are installed for tomorrow's opening games, they will be the kind you see on TV with the netting hooked directly into the pitch. Also giving a big-time feel to the new-look RAP will be a large digital video display screen behind the east goal that will show replays and highlights from other World Cup games taking place across the country.
As strange as it seems, even the recent showers proved beneficial at the park.
"We like rain before a game because the ball moves quicker on the turf ... it makes it skiddy," said Knox. "These are the most perfect field conditions any player could want to play on."
And finally after a week of training around Greater Victoria, Group F is ready to rumble with a lot of pent-up energy and emotion.
"Everyone is eager to get on with it," said Knox.
"You can only do so much practising."
So let the games begin.
