IT celebrates its first birthday this week. The 3G Arena at Netherdale arrived, somewhat late, last January amidst fanfare and pledges of improving football and rugby facilities.

It was hoped the �950,000 facility would weather any storm as teams of all ages from around the central Borders queued to play on the carpet.

But in recent weeks the investment - �500,000 from Scottish Borders Council, �350,000 from the Government's Cashback and �100,000 from The Hayward Trust - as well as the facility has been slammed because of forced closures due to snow and frost.

Officials closed the main 3G pitch from last Monday night following the first of several snow showers. The hard frost which followed left a crisp two-inch blanket.

Dougie Anderson, facilities manager for operators Borders Sport and Leisure, told us: "It isn't an all-weather surface and never will be - I don't know of any all-weather pitches in the UK. Someone has called the pitch all-weather at one point, and there's now natural disappointment whenever we are forced to close.

"The one problem we have is snow, when it falls, and then a combination of snow and frost. We have trained safely on the surface on temperatures going as low as minus ten (degrees Celsius), but the problems arise when the snow comes."

The former football development officer admits mistakes were made when the pitch first opened 12 months ago. And following advice from managers of similar facilities across Scotland, the Netherdale 3G Arena will continue to close whenever there is a blanket of frozen snow.

Mr Anderson continued: "Last year for the opening match we tried to brush the snow off the pitch and we ended up with knee-high piles of the rubber granules at the sides, which we are told will damage the pitch.

"Nobody is more frustrated than us when it has to close but we have a duty of care on this facility for the next ten years. Your gut reaction is to brush it off but we would only damage the pitch."

Allowing players onto the ground to break up the snow has also been ruled out as the compacted snow crystalises and forms solid glass-like chunks of ice. The neighbouring five-a-side pitch did remain open for a couple of nights last week to allow rugby teams to train.

And the evidence of their efforts on Friday was a surface littered with lethal lumps of ice.

Since opening last January, the 3G Arena has catered for 118 full football and rugby matches as well as providing a training surface for around 1200 players of all ages and abilities every week.

Depending on this week's weather, it will have only been closed for around a dozen of its first 364 days. And, according to Mr Anderson, it continues to present an excellent return for the initial investment.

He added: "You just have to look back a couple of years to before we got the 3G, you were lucky if you have 20 or 30 players on this pitch every fortnight. Now we have around 1200 every week."