Since the very second that Jamie Murphy crumpled to the floor of Rugby Park’s plastic pitch last Sunday, debate has raged about the suitability of synthetic pitches in our top division and indeed in football generally.

Firstly let’s be clear that in terms of the nasty cruciate ligament damage suffered by Murphy, I can 100 per cent say that it was not caused by the pitch. It was purely bad luck. The uproar from lots of fans claiming that Jamie damaged his knee because of the pitch was nonsense.

This type of injury happens week in,

week out all over the world on grass pitches. Unfortunately it is one of those injuries that rears its ugly head in any sport on any surface. It can occur from landing awkwardly on one leg from an aerial tussle or if your studs get caught in the ground when you try to change direction. It’s usually pretty innocuous.

I actually picked up a bad knee injury similar to Jamie’s while playing for Falkirk against Hearts back in 2010. On, guess what? A bowling green of a grass pitch at the Falkirk Stadium. After just a couple of minutes I went to turn with nobody near me and my studs got caught in the grass. I felt a searing pain in my knee and it turned out I had torn all my lateral ligaments and fractured my knee cap.

My knee had a crack that nearly split it in half. It cost me six months of my career.

Was there the same uproar from the stands and social media that it was an injury caused by playing on grass? No. So people need to calm down a little with the “ban all AstroTurf” chat because it causes bad one injuries.

Simply put, it doesn’t.

But that’s not to say I agree that football matches in our top division should be played on a plastic pitch. I don’t think they should. For two reasons. Firstly the long-term damage to players from training and playing week in, week out in my opinion will be significant. It’s too early right now to tell what ultimately the damage will be in the future, but I think this generation of players playing day in, day out on plastic in 15 to 20 years will have serious problems with hips, ankles and knees as they go into middle age. The wear and tear caused by battering your body on a hard surface with no real shock absorption will cause real issues in my opinion for players in later life. And even in not so later life.

I signed for Rochester Rhinos in the second tier of US soccer back in 2013 at the age of 31.

I had suffered two serious injuries in my career to my knee and ankle but had fully recovered and was in good condition. Rochester not only played on a plastic pitch but trained on it every day too. I, generally, up until then had trained and played almost exclusively on grass.

Within six months of my first year at the club I developed chronic tendonitis in my Achilles. I had never had any issue whatsoever with that area of my body. But that was almost certainly caused by the plastic pitch.

I battled through it in my first season but in my second season it was unbearable. I would wake up in the morning and be unable to walk to the bathroom in my apartment. My Achilles was shot to bits and I came dangerously close to developing an addiction to painkillers trying to dull the pain. That was just to get me through training sessions.

In the end it basically ended my career

at 32, as despite carrying on for a few years afterwards, I was never the same. Six years on from Rochester and my Achilles tendon is still causing me big problems. A game of five-a-sides or a 10-minute run is total agony. If someone even brushed it lightly right now I would hit the roof in pain. So that is what I mean about the short and longer-term damage playing consistently on these pitches can cause to players’ bodies.

Secondly it’s also the bounce and roll of playing on a synthetic surface that just isn’t right. You don’t get the consistency of grass and it slows the tempo of the game and dilutes the quality. First-time passes or strikes at goal are so much more difficult on a plastic pitch. You can’t truly trust the bounce of the ball like you can on grass. It can make you look foolish. Or at least that was my excuse in Rochester.

We want to showcase our game and abilities at the top level to the rest of the world and show we have quality players and a quality product. It just isn’t possible to show a footballer’s true ability playing on plastic.

The output of quality just isn’t the same. Players can’t fully express themselves or play instinctively like they would on grass.

That can’t be good for the overall product so for that reason I wouldn’t be playing Scottish Premiership games on an artificial surface.

It’s now time to rip them up for good at the highest level.