When you're playing host to the most successful World Cup soccer team, you have to provide nothing short of a perfect pitch.
With kick-off set for Tuesday night at the Rogers Centre, a local company is hard at work making sure the ideal stage is set for the match – 100,000 square feet of grass is being carefully cut and spun into big rolls.
The grass will be shipped to Toronto where it will be laid down on the field for the match between Brazil and Chile.
Mike Zander, with Zander Sod, says they have about 1,800 acres of fields in Alliston, Beeton, and Cookstown. He says it’s no ordinary grass.
“This sod is great,” he says. “It's been top dressed with sand and it's what they want on the sport fields now-a-days.”
The grass is also highly regarded because it repairs itself quickly and is the perfect green. It takes about one and a half years to grow it. In all, there are 570 rolls are being cut, each one about 50 feet long and weighing a tonne.
As Dave Hemelaar makes sure the cuts are straight, he says the cutting process could take about 25 hours to complete. The grass will be installed first thing Monday morning.
“We have an 11-hour window to install the grass,” Zander says. “We have a big enough crew, lots of manpower. We should be able to do that no problem.”
This is not the first time Zander Sod has laid grass for an international event. Zander says next week's soccer friendly will give his company worldwide attention. And that's why everything must be perfect and on time.
The removal of the sod won't be easy. Once the soccer game is done, crews have been given just four hours to get it out of the stadium. Once that happens they'll ship it to a soccer field in Shelburne.
