TFC advance to MLS Final vs Sounders
Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 7:55 pm
With their extra time win tonight, TFC (a higher seed than SEA) earns their first berth in the MLS Final to be held Dec 10 at BMO Field.
This story is important for the Argos, since soccer fans tried to make an objection that CFL play would rip up the turf. The ideal conditions for the GC made that a moot point.
https://www.thestar.com/sports/tfc/2016 ... ition.html
"It’s been three long days with little sleep for BMO Field head groundskeeper Robert Heggie and his crew.
The team has worked around the clock on converting the stadium’s playing surface from a football gridiron, for Sunday’s Grey Cup, to a soccer pitch, for the second leg of Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference between Toronto FC and Montreal Impact.
In the first 36 hours, Heggie said, crew members took one four-hour nap break. Some went home to bed; others crashed in less comfortable places, like the stadium’s suites or on tarps in its groundskeeping shop.
“It was just kind of wherever you can find a soft place,” he laughed.
Their hard work, which began almost as soon as the Ottawa Redblacks won the Grey Cup in overtime, seems to have paid off.
When the Star went pitch-side midday Wednesday, hours before the Reds were to kick off the most important game in club history, gone were the gridiron and the temporary ads.
With removable paint, top sand, green pigment and that hard work, Heggie’s team produced a near-purrfect pitch.
“Me and my guys, we give it a B+,” said Heggie , who recently told the Star he hoped the challenge of this conversion would quiet any remaining naysayers who believe BMO Field can’t house both a soccer and football team.
A B+ is a better grade than he and BMO Field General Manager Peter Church expected, and better than the “prepare for the worst” warning they gave Toronto FC’s players heading into the match, well aware of the short changeover time coupled with the difficulty of late November weather.
Heggie said a real nitpicker could find evidence of the Canadian Football League, but it would require a close look.
The crew could have scrubbed the paint a third time, he said, but after starting the process found it was pulling up blades of grass.
“What’s more important, aesthetic or playability?” Heggie said. “Playability should be more important. We don’t want to remove all of the grass just to get rid of the paint.”
Toronto FC general manager Tim Bezbatchenko walked the field Wednesday morning, and president Bill Manning preemptively deemed Heggie the match’s Most Valuable Player.
But he and Church don’t want the field garnering that kind of attention.
“The pitch should not be a news story tonight,” Church said. “It should be all about Toronto versus Montreal.”
The decisive areas of the field, the six and 18-yard boxes, are in particularly good shape, Heggie said.
And there’s no concern of a repeat of the debacle in Montreal last week ― when the too-narrow penalty boxes required repainting and delayed kickoff by 41 minutes ― though Heggie is leaving measuring tapes out for the referees to make sure.
Last week’s mishap is something the grounds crew has had its fun with on social media over the past eight days, and that didn’t stop Wednesday. It tweeted a picture of measuring tape across one of the field’s white lines with the caption, “44 yards... 132 feet... … measure twice, paint once.”
“That’s where the game really should be decided, in that box,” Heggie said. “I think it’s up to TFC now. I think we did our job.”
If the Reds do advance past Montreal, the groundskeeper says the field will be in even better shape for the Dec. 10 final at BMO Field.
“That 10 days is huge, when you can start putting grow covers out and grow lights back out and actually having an extended period of time to utilize all that, you can actually get some recovering.”
This story is important for the Argos, since soccer fans tried to make an objection that CFL play would rip up the turf. The ideal conditions for the GC made that a moot point.
https://www.thestar.com/sports/tfc/2016 ... ition.html
"It’s been three long days with little sleep for BMO Field head groundskeeper Robert Heggie and his crew.
The team has worked around the clock on converting the stadium’s playing surface from a football gridiron, for Sunday’s Grey Cup, to a soccer pitch, for the second leg of Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference between Toronto FC and Montreal Impact.
In the first 36 hours, Heggie said, crew members took one four-hour nap break. Some went home to bed; others crashed in less comfortable places, like the stadium’s suites or on tarps in its groundskeeping shop.
“It was just kind of wherever you can find a soft place,” he laughed.
Their hard work, which began almost as soon as the Ottawa Redblacks won the Grey Cup in overtime, seems to have paid off.
When the Star went pitch-side midday Wednesday, hours before the Reds were to kick off the most important game in club history, gone were the gridiron and the temporary ads.
With removable paint, top sand, green pigment and that hard work, Heggie’s team produced a near-purrfect pitch.
“Me and my guys, we give it a B+,” said Heggie , who recently told the Star he hoped the challenge of this conversion would quiet any remaining naysayers who believe BMO Field can’t house both a soccer and football team.
A B+ is a better grade than he and BMO Field General Manager Peter Church expected, and better than the “prepare for the worst” warning they gave Toronto FC’s players heading into the match, well aware of the short changeover time coupled with the difficulty of late November weather.
Heggie said a real nitpicker could find evidence of the Canadian Football League, but it would require a close look.
The crew could have scrubbed the paint a third time, he said, but after starting the process found it was pulling up blades of grass.
“What’s more important, aesthetic or playability?” Heggie said. “Playability should be more important. We don’t want to remove all of the grass just to get rid of the paint.”
Toronto FC general manager Tim Bezbatchenko walked the field Wednesday morning, and president Bill Manning preemptively deemed Heggie the match’s Most Valuable Player.
But he and Church don’t want the field garnering that kind of attention.
“The pitch should not be a news story tonight,” Church said. “It should be all about Toronto versus Montreal.”
The decisive areas of the field, the six and 18-yard boxes, are in particularly good shape, Heggie said.
And there’s no concern of a repeat of the debacle in Montreal last week ― when the too-narrow penalty boxes required repainting and delayed kickoff by 41 minutes ― though Heggie is leaving measuring tapes out for the referees to make sure.
Last week’s mishap is something the grounds crew has had its fun with on social media over the past eight days, and that didn’t stop Wednesday. It tweeted a picture of measuring tape across one of the field’s white lines with the caption, “44 yards... 132 feet... … measure twice, paint once.”
“That’s where the game really should be decided, in that box,” Heggie said. “I think it’s up to TFC now. I think we did our job.”
If the Reds do advance past Montreal, the groundskeeper says the field will be in even better shape for the Dec. 10 final at BMO Field.
“That 10 days is huge, when you can start putting grow covers out and grow lights back out and actually having an extended period of time to utilize all that, you can actually get some recovering.”
