Former QPR Managing Director Ian Simpson has discussed how the club were pioneers in the world of plastic football pitches.

The Hoops were the first team in British history to play on a plastic pitch, and Simpson says that it was an idea embraced by former-Hoops manager Terry Venables as a way to speed up his players.

Speaking to the club's official website as part of the Loftus Road 100th anniversary celebrations, Simpson said: "I didn't quite know when I took on the job as Managing Director what it would entail but then Jim Gregory who lived over at Laughton House, He didn't say a great deal until he got you into his room there and he let loose with all of his plans.

Loftus Road

"The pitch was in a terrible state as it had been year after year and so the decision was made after one season to put down what's now known as a plastic pitch.

"I discovered a surface called omni turf which was polypropylene, and was like a shag-pile carpet with sand in and they convinced me and Jim that this was the best surface at the time. So trials were done on it, mostly they'd only laid tennis courts and in those days they didn't have shock pads so after a year we realised we had to do something because the ball was bouncing over the bar!

"So we took it up and put a shock pad down. Some were sold, Luton Town were next, then Oldham and then some other clubs and it went down all over the place as a surface for training grounds because players would play quicker and think quicker as the ball came to them.

"(Terry) Venables' theory was that you could quicken up your players by making them train on this, and this was then taken up by Manchester United and I can't imagine that now there is a Premier League side that doesn't have a plastic surface for training."