Here’s a great article and photo of Manchester City’s undersoil heating at Maine Road. It gives some background to what was a revolutionary pitch system when installed in the 1970s. Back in 2002 I interviewed former chairman Eric Alexander about it and he explained that it had been his idea to install a Swedish system. The idea came when he was in Sweden on business and noticed that the offices where he had a meeting had a heated car park. He thought that if that could be achieved with a car park imagine what could be done with a football pitch. He contacted the company and the rest was history.
There’s more on the system and its installation in my 2003 book Farewell To Maine Road, including the regret that the system was installed relying on pipes running lengthways, i.e. end to end. According to Bernard Halford this meant that the full pitch had to be heated even if only one goal was frozen. ‘It was too expensive when we were financially stretched,’ claimed Bernard, although the money that came from TV was significant. Often City’s games were played when other games were postponed and City frequently ended up on TV when games at Bolton, Oldham and other northwest clubs were postponed due to frozen pitches.
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