The people who operate stadium authorities love artificial turf, if only for its low-maintenance qualities. It doesn't need to be watered or mown, and it is oblivious to blight.

Players in almost any sport detest it, although a quarter-century ago the irrepressible New York Mets pitcher Tug McGraw may have had the final word. Asked whether he preferred real grass to the artificial stuff, McGraw replied "I don't know. I've never smoked AstroTurf."

Besides the injuries known to be endemic to artificial playing surfaces - abrasions and other tug-burns, as well as the common if all-too-painful dislocation known as "turf toe" - player unions in several American sports have gone on record with their philosophical opposition to artificial turf, contending that it is prone to producing other injuries which simply wouldn't occur if games were played on God's green grass, as nature intended.

The debate is certain to heat up again after the events of last Sunday, when the New York Jets - widely considered to be Super Bowl contenders - probably saw their season evaporate 23 minutes into their opening game against the New England Patriots. Quarterback Vinny Testaverde, who was positioned several yards from the action, took a tentative step toward a ball that had just come loose, pitched forward, and, after writhing in agony for several minutes on the Giants Stadium floor, was carted off to hospital where he underwent surgery on a ruptured Achilles tendon.

No one, including Testaverde can prove conclusively the injury was turf-related, and Jets coach Bill Parcells, after reviewing tape of the pivotal incident several times, maintained his insistence that "it could have happened anywhere". But any rational analysis suggests otherwise.

To the Irish sporting public, the most prominent recollection of Giants Stadium is that it served as the venue for Ireland's inspirational win over Italy in the 1994 World Cup. That game, however, was played on real grass, which was specially installed at the insistence of FIFA for the duration of the tournament.

In fact, for the past four summers the operation has been repeated. From the start of the Major League Soccer season each spring until the advent of the National Football League (NFL) season in late August, Giants Stadium is a grass field. For reasons best known to themselves, the operators of the New Jersey Sports Authority, which operates the Meadowlands Sports Complex, have returned to artificial turf for the NFL season. The Giants, nominally the home team, have obviously concurred with this decision, and Parcells, whose Jets are secondary tenants there, went along without opposition.

If artificial turf has a propensity for producing injuries, the brand-new carpet installed at the Meadowlands a few weeks ago appears to have a particularly voracious appetite. Just a few days after it had been laid down, Jets wide receiver Wayne Chrebet attempted to make a simple cut while running a pass route in an exhibition game against the Minnesota Vikings. He caught his studs in the turf, broke a bone in his left foot, and will be lost for half the season.

Just two nights later, former Bolton Wanderers striker and now MetroStars player Sasa Curcic tore up his right knee on the same surface. And of four serious injuries sustained by Jets players in their September 13th season opener, two - Testaverde's, along with a season-ending knee injury to running back Leon Johnson - appear suspiciously turf-related.

Parcells did his best to distance himself from the widely-held impression that he is an AstroTurf proponent.

"I like grass," insisted the Jets coach. "I'd prefer to play on grass - if the grass was good," said Parcells. "Now, I can promise you, I played on bad grass in New England one year, and that's worse than artificial turf."

After taking over what had been the worst team in pro football just two years ago, Parcells had produced a divisional championship last year, and many experts were predicting that this season he would become the first coach in NFL history to take three different teams to the Super Bowl, having already accomplished that goal with the New York Giants (twice) and with the Patriots in 1996.

A key component in that revival, however, has been Testaverde, a one-time collegiate star at Miami who had endured 11 disappointing seasons as an NFL journeyman in Tampa Bay, Cleveland, and Baltimore before reinventing himself, under Parcells' tutelage, as a Pro Bowl quarterback last year.

"I've never been a fan of AstroTurf," said Testaverde, when he arrived on crutches later in the afternoon. "I don't know if it was the turf; I really can't say. I pushed off pretty hard to go get the ball, and it popped."

"I'd hate to say that," said Parcells. "If you saw what happened you wouldn't believe it. There was no violent movement. I mean, you've probably made a similar move a 100 times today just walking around." Artificial surfaces have been with us for 33 years now, and an entire generation of American athletes have grown up labouring under the delusion that sports were actually meant to be played on carpets. In 1965, an expansion baseball team in Houston then known as the "Colt .45s" played its first season in the world's first climate-controlled indoor stadium, the Harris County Domed Sports Stadium. Problems with sunlight and air necessitated the field being re-sodded several times that year.

Scientists from the Dow Chemical company were put on the case, and the following year a wonderful new product called AstroTurf was unveiled in a stadium simultaneously rechristened the Astrodome, a.k.a. the Eighth Wonder of the World.

Its use spread rapidly all over the country, but, despite its propensity for causing injuries, decades elapsed before sports moguls began to discover that they were paying out more in insurance policies than they were saving in lawn maintenance. Many stadiums around the country - Miami, New England and Kansas City come to mind - reconverted to natural grass, and more new stadiums than not built in the past decade have installed natural grass.

None of which is going to help Vinny Testaverde, or the Jets, who still have to play seven more home games on the Killer Turf this autumn.

"Guys are scared," confirmed Rick Mirer, the Jets well-travelled back-up who must now assume Testaverde's place at quarterback. "I don't think there's a player in the league who wouldn't rather not play on artificial turf. They're aware that these things happen - goofy things you wouldn't see happen on grass."