MP Alan Mak helps Hawks usher in a new era at Westleigh Park

Havant MP Alan Mak has helped Hawks welcome in a new era at Westleigh Park.
Hawks manager Paul Doswell and MP Alan Mak prepare to start digging up the Westleigh Park pitch this morning. Photo by Dave Haines.Hawks manager Paul Doswell and MP Alan Mak prepare to start digging up the Westleigh Park pitch this morning. Photo by Dave Haines.
Hawks manager Paul Doswell and MP Alan Mak prepare to start digging up the Westleigh Park pitch this morning. Photo by Dave Haines.

The club’s grass pitch was today starting to be ripped up ahead of the installation of a new £500,000 3G surface.

Mak - a club vice president - was invited to dig up the first piece of turf watched by Hawks boss Paul Doswell and contractors from S & C Slatter, the Berkshire company who will be installing the state-of-the-art artificial surface.

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Hawks will be one of eight clubs, out of 22, in next season’s National League South division with a 3G surface.

Slough, Dorking, Maidstone, Oxford City and Eastbourne Borough all played on such a pitch in 2019/20.

Billericay and Hemel Hempstead, like Hawks, are currently installing a 3G pitch in time for the National League season to start at the beginning of October.

While the Hawks are digging up their grass pitch, up in Yorkshire Harrogate Town are preparing to take up their 3G surface four years after it was laid.

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The Yorkshire club are having to install a grass pitch again after winning promotion to the EFL by beating Notts County on Sunday in the play-off final at Wembley.

Currently, 3G pitches are banned by the EFL - the last Football League game staged on an artificial surface was at Preston’s Deepdale in 1994.

It will take 10 weeks for Harrogate’s grass pitch to be ready, and if needed they will play their first few home games of 2020/21 at a different venue.

‘Of course it would be a blow, particularly for the fans, but I think it would be a small price to pay for promotion to League Two,’ Harrogate boss Simon Weaver had said prior to his side’s Wembley win.

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Doswell, though, feels the EFL will change their mind over 3G pitches.

‘I do genuinely feel they will be allowed in the Football League soon,’ he explained.

‘Clubs have got to go this way for their own survival.

‘That’s partly why we’re doing it. The club has had no income since April, so we had to do something.

‘The club is fantastically well funded by the chairman Derek Pope and his company, but even with that we had to act before we reached a danger zone.

‘This will be the bedrock of the club.’

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Doswell is a huge fan of 3G pitches, having been boss at Sutton in 2015 when S & C Slatter installed such a surface at Gander Green Lane.

‘If you could give me a pitch like Wembley every week, I’d be happy to play on grass,’ he told The News last month

‘I am a traditionalist in that respect, but I’m also a pragmatist.

‘I admit these pitches, if they’re dry, can be a bit too slow but if you water them then they are as good as anything you’ll find.

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‘They have played World Cup qualifiers on 3G pitches, the Women’s World Cup in Canada was held on them (in 2015) and that was a brilliant spectacle.

‘If it’s good enough for World Cup games, it’s more than good enough for teams at our level.’

The first Champions League game held on a 3G took place in 2006 at Spartak Moscow’s Stadion Luzhniki. The following year, Russia beat England in a Euro 2008 qualifier. Seven years later, England played Lithuania away on a 3G in another Euro qualifier.

Today, Andorra play all of their World Cup and Euro Championship qualifying games on a 3G surface.