Smell-hurst Park! – Palace pitch gets garlic treatment

Crystal Palace have adopted an unusual measure to get their Selhurst Park pitch up to scratch ahead of the 2017-18 Premier League season – and it stinks.

The Eagles have been using a form of liquid garlic to keep grass-destroying pests at bay, and groundsman Bruce Elliott is the man landed with a task that is as onerous as it is odorous. 

Elliott explained his eye-watering approach to maintaining the playing surface in an interview with the club’s official website, which afforded him a break from his three-week mission to turn the ground into Smell-hurst Park.

“The reason we’re doing it is because like a lot of clubs around the country we have a problem with nematodes, which are a microscopic, parasitic worm-like creature that live within the root zone,” he said.

“When it gets in there it can distort all the roots system and creates a weak plant that is susceptible to disease and wear and tear so we have to eradicate them, and one of the ways to do that is with garlic.

There’s a strange smell around SE25 at the moment…