About the NPFA

The National Playing Fields Association is a charity devoted to sport as recreation, education and fun. It is not involved with sport for political purposes or to help professionals make money by creating spectacles for others to watch. The N.P.F.A. is interested both in those who want to develop their physical skills through sport and those whose only wish is to participate in a game safely and enjoyably. They are on the side of the little boy who everyday kicks a tennis ball across a park on his way to school, counting the kicks, never wanting his self-imposed task to be made easier or the challenge more predictable by the removal of any obstacle, the lowering of any bump or the draining of any puddle have appeared overnight. They would also understand why the same little boy would not see the point of cheering for a team if it was made up mainly of players brought in from elsewhere to represent his school.

Sport involves tests of skill developed to deal with the predictable, but those of us who are concerned with providing the facilities must appreciate that too great an emphasis on predictability and learned skills can lead to boredom. Out with the intense competitiveness of professional sport, games should also be fun. This vital, additional element is often a product of the intervention of chance, re-levelling the odds and demanding innovation, but too much unpredictability allows chance to take over so completely that no worthwhile challenge remains.

For good, competitive sport we must create conditions under foot that will allow the game to fairly represent the nature of the challenge intended, but that does not necessarily require that the playing conditions should be standardized. One of the great virtues of soil-based turf is its ability to vary in character according to location and weather conditions. This is of particular significance in games such as cricket, tennis and golf where the reaction of the ball off the surface is so very much part of the game. Even to standardize the length of the grass in a game such as football would be to eliminate the differences between the more intricate skills of those, like the Brazilians, who prefer to play their football on grass cut less short than is customary in England where traditionally we have favoured a more open game involving longer passes.

In our provision for sport we should resist administrative and commercial pressures that may tend to propel us in the direction of dull uniformity. To achieve this we need informed and independent advice, but such advice is only a small fraction of that on offer. In promoting this book the N.P.F.A. has been concerned to make available in print the principles upon which sports facilities can be economically and efficiently constructed, and effectively maintained, wherever possible making intelligent use of locally available, natural materials. It is these materials that have helped to preserve a measure of diversity to which local sport in Britain has been traditionally accustomed.