Columnist and supporter Giles Smith casts a concerned eye over environmental factors that can still affect a modern day football match.

During Saturday's FA Cup match, we tried to come up with a few alternative uses for Wigan's pitch. The trench feature in a World War One theme park was one of the more promising suggestions. Alternative site for the Glastonbury Festival was another. Venue for a large scale, inter-county pottery contest was another.

What have they been doing up there, when nobody was looking? Has there been a battle we didn't know about? Between two armies on horseback?

There was that great swathe of grassless earth down the centre of the pitch, as if someone had tried to fashion an improvised landing strip. It looked like the new Wembley after those 400lb American footballers had finished throwing each other around on it. In fact, it looked like the new Wembley while they were still building it - just after the arch went up and just before the roof went on.

The last pitch one had seen in this kind of condition was? well, probably ours, for a couple of weeks in the 2005-06 season, before the drains got sorted out. But at least our mud was flat. Wigan's included hills and valleys and various cave-like regions that were destined to remain unexplored.

If Shaun Wright-Phillips had been playing out wide, there was a serious danger of him disappearing underground and never coming back. Sound tactical decision by Mr Grant, then, bringing him inside for this one.

Of course, we've all grown fussy. Undersoil heating, hi-tech drainage systems, special nylon weaves that make the surface tougher - we're pampered like crazy, pitch-wise. So we tend to forget how, in the old days, all football in January was played on pitches such as Wigan's, and worse - four parts sand to three parts clay, with a bit of ground-up builders rubble thrown into the mix.

During the Seventies, and deep into the Eighties, even at supposedly posh grounds such as Old Trafford, grass was rarely seen much beyond the second week of September. There was a thin, token layer of the stuff to mark the opening of the season, but it pretty soon got trudged back up the tunnel on the bottoms of players' boots.

Upton Park never had any grass at all, ever. As for Ninian Park in Cardiff? well, someone might have ordered some grass for that ground at some point, but there must have been some problem with the order and it never turned up.

Anyway, the point is, despite the hindrance of Wigan's throw-back, council allotment-style pitch, the team's performance that evening was fantastically solid and, in places (the goals, not least of all), inspired.

We played lots of quick, tidy, clever football. This was grudgingly admitted by the BBC's punditry team, though they were in too much of a sulk to be completely gracious about it, having selected, their body language seemed to be suggesting, 'the wrong FA Cup tie.'

Serves them right, of course, for being cautious and going with an all-Premier League match. If it was 'romance' they were after, then they should have had the courage to go to Anfield, where an assortment of hyper-active postmen and former league professionals with grudges were creatively embarrassing Liverpool.

The BBC didn't go there, of course, because they anticipated a drama-less slaughter. Which was cowardly of them - and also ill-informed. Hadn't they noticed Liverpool's recent form? Didn't they see Havant & Waterlooville take out Swansea? Embarrassment was more on the cards than people reckoned.

Anyway, the BBC chose us at Wigan, on a mud slide. And, in the circumstances, given the entertainment we provided, they should have been more grateful.

Our next FA Cup tie, being at home, will be played on an excellent pitch. No fears, then, about the random effects of an uneven surface. But even as one threat recedes, another raises its ugly head.

Balloons.

Manchester City's balloon-related disaster against Sheffield United has shown the season-wrecking terror that can be unleashed by these seemingly innocent novelty items. Clearly, it only takes the wrong balloon to stray into the penalty area at the wrong moment and chaos and panic are introduced into even the most well-disciplined defence.
Or, at any rate, into a defence disciplined by Sven-Goran Eriksson.

I'm backing Huddersfield to bring a few. It's what lower league teams do when they're drawn away to Premier League clubs. (It's also what Fulham did the other season, when they came to the Bridge for a league match. Odd, that.) But now that balloons have been shown to play a critical part in a cup upset, they'll bring them in even greater numbers and with even greater enthusiasm.

It's a menace, make no mistake. But it's down to the players, on the day, to stamp it out. And I think we've got the quality to do so.