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Toronto FC is facing surface problems at BMO Field, long before the Argonauts get there

Andrew Bucholtz

Field conditions can have a massive impact on soccer, which is why many Toronto FC fans were so thrilled to get an all-grass surface at BMO Field in 2010 and so reluctant to contemplate sharing the stadium with the Toronto Argonauts. All-grass surfaces can have their own problems, though, and that's what's happening now. Long before the planned move of the Argos comes to pass, TFC coach Ryan Nelsen told The Toronto Sun's Steve Buffery ahead of the team's Voyageurs Cup opener Wednesday against Vancouver that BMO Field's condition is making home games difficult for his team:

Put it this way: If there's a couple of cows and some goats grazing on the BMO Field pitch on Wednesday night prior to the first leg of the Canadian championship, no one would be overly shocked.

Certainly not Nelsen, who expressed his frustrations over the state of the BMO Field surface on Monday after a practice at TFC's training facility in Downsview.

"It's a major problem, a major leveler," said Nelsen, who compared the BMO Field grass to an ice hockey rink full of bumps, deep cracks and holes. "That evens it out for the other team."

The condition of BMO Field has been a talking point since TFC's home opener on March 22. It was poor then and, apparently, it's not much better now. Players and coaches were reluctant to use the pitch as an excuse for Saturday's 2-1 loss to the New England Revolution, but you could see the frustration simmering at the surface following the match.

"It's frustrating, because we want to play an attractive, attacking brand of football, and the field at the moment, it's probably not conducive to that unfortunately," said Nelsen. "In saying that, we still put together 530 passes on Saturday and that was more than any team in the whole league did, even on the better fields. It's the brand of football we want to be playing, and we want to be hard to beat, which is frustrating because we let in a couple of soft goals."

How did the field get in such bad shape? Well, a lot of it has to do with the rough winter Toronto has experienced. BMO Field head groundskeeper Robert Heggie told Neil Davidson of The Canadian Press in March that the weather conditions had been the most difficult he'd ever faced:

“I’m battling Mother Nature, that’s what it is,” the Toronto FC head groundskeeper lamented in an interview.
“We’ve never had a winter like this,” he added.

Despite the best efforts of his staff, millions of dollars worth of technology and no shortage of science, Heggie knew this winter was going to wallop his prize soccer surface.

“I knew,” he said in an interview in his office at Toronto FC’s training ground. “Ever since that ice storm, I knew ‘This isn’t good, guys.’ But I don’t create the (MLS) schedule.”

What's remarkable is that the pitch got so poor despite Herculean efforts by Heggie and his staff:

Heggie and his team put in 17-hour days before the home opener working on the field. And they were there until 1 a.m. after the game, putting down seed, rolling the surface, fertilizing it and then putting the cover back on.

“I don’t think I’ve slept since I looked at my grass in February,” he said with a laugh.

While the playing surface took its lumps, the MLS club was quick to point the finger at the elements rather than the groundskeeping crew.

“I blame God for that at the moment for the winter he’s given Toronto,” manager Ryan Nelsen said, half jokingly, last Friday.

“It’s impossible to keep grass with that kind of winter,” captain Steven Caldwell said after the 1-0 win over D.C. United.

The grass at windswept BMO Field, down by Lake Ontario south of the city, is Kentucky bluegrass augmented with perennial ryegrass, a fast-growing and aggressive type of plant.

“It’s cool-season grass, but this isn’t what they meant by cool season,” Heggie said.

The field issues could be written off as an abnormality given the unusually harsh winter, but even a more typical Toronto winter isn't great for natural grass. This could become even more concerning once the Argonauts move to BMO Field, something that seems quite likely now that the plan's been endorsed by the Exhibition Place board, city council's executive committee and the overall city council. While the CFL season doesn't start until June, making these early-year issues soccer-only, football can take a terrific toll of its own on a grass surface, and that may be especially the case late in the CFL and MLS calendar. Both leagues' playoffs take place largely in November, with the Grey Cup usually in one of the last weeks of November and the MLS Cup final usually in December; a wet fall could cause plenty of damage to a shared grass surface, especially if both the Argos and TFC are in their respective playoffs.

MLSE's messaging on the new field's playing surface has been all over the map, from "we're committed to grass" to "a hybrid playing surface — natural grass combined with artificial fibres" to keeping natural grass and expecting "six to seven days to ensure that field is back in great shape for soccer," so it's not exactly clear what BMO Field will look like by the time it's a shared MLS/CFL facility. However, the field issues happening now with natural grass may help to push towards a hybrid surface, or even an all-artificial one. If a grass field in Toronto can be this problematic long before a football team tears it up, it's difficult to see it working as an appropriate surface for a shared stadium.