Embarrassment about Australian football pitches only tells half the story

But each sport has important financial considerations to consider. We are not Brazil, South Africa, or China that use political will and public resources simply to attract major events, despite many of their stadiums hardly proving financially viable in the longer term.

Stadiums are expensive. As of 2015, it was estimated that the cost for stadiums over 40,000 seats were $7,000 - $14,000 per seat with lower capacity venues costing around $5,000 - $9,000.

We are very fortunate we have so many world class stadiums. For example, whereas Greece has three stadiums with a 30,000+ seating capacity for its population of around 11 million, Australia has 13 to service 24 million people.

And with the A-League averaging less than 13,000 people per match during the 2015-16 season, it may be difficult for football alone to attract public funding for any stadium that supports just one code.

So Ange, given that the various football codes need to share the major stadiums, it would be wiser to offer ideas about how we can improve the situation rather than mock our claim of being a great sporting nation just because of field imperfections.

Our curators have one of the toughest jobs in the world given the extensive use of our major stadiums, only built with public funding on the basis of them being adequately utilised over time, as indeed should be the Australian way when public funding is concerned.

Without the prospect of artificial fields, it may well be that beautiful Australian football fields can only be guaranteed in the spring and summer when warmer weather conditions favour speedy and lush turf recovery.