Nanobubbles, hungry foxes and hidden reservoir - Twickenham's hi-tech turf

Nobody is keener than Jim Buttar to see flowing, running rugby at Twickenham this autumn.

"A 58-52 scoreline, one scrum and three line-outs all match, and we'll go home happy!" he tells BBC Sport.

Buttar's interest is professional though, rather than just the pleasure of the game.

He is England Rugby's head of grounds and technical operations, in charge of the Allianz Stadium turf.

"When the ball is in hand more and the game is more flowing and open, the wear and tear on the surface is a bit more spread out," he says.

However the action unfolds, Buttar and his team will be busy.

England play Australia on Sunday, before matches against Japan and New Zealand on 14 and 21 November respectively.

Those will be full-on days, primping and preening the playing surface. The final weekend of November, though, will be something else.

The Nations Championship finals take place at Allianz Stadium from 27 to 29 November, with double-header fixtures involving the top 12 Test teams in the world on three successive days.

"We are likely to be doing 14 or 15-hour days and that is just what it is," says Buttar.

"That finals weekend is a very condensed number of high-pressure games in a short space of time, but I'm actually looking forward to it, being able to really test yourself and all the planning that you've done."

It will also test a whole new pitch.

Over the summer, the Allianz Stadium surface was relaid.

The turf that Buttar and his team had tended with such care since 2012 was unceremoniously ripped up, with diggers lifting out 9,500 tonnes of earth and grass.

Rolls of new turf, each one 11 metres long and a little over a metre wide, were laid in four days.

Grown and harvested 200 miles away, the turf was transported from Scunthorpe to London to take centre stage at English rugby's home.

New grass was only the start, however.

The previous pitch depended on a sand base to drain water. Moisture would pass through the turf and down the drain quickly, ensuring that, even after a deluge, the pitch would be playable.

However, such a system has disadvantages. Any nutrition applied to the grass also had little time to work, passing through and away before the full benefits could take effect.

Environmentally and financially, with the price of fertilisers rocketing in recent years, Buttar knew better was possible.

A fact-finding trip to the Netherlands prompted the installation of a huge hi-tech reservoir, capable of holding 1.4 million litres of water below the pitch.

It essentially enables Buttar to mechanically move the water table, either speeding up or slowing down moisture's passage through the turf depending on whether drainage or nutrition is the priority.

Water is also captured so it can be reused, with nanobubble technology - aerating with miniscule bubbles to bolster soil health and turf durability and avoid stagnation - helping to keep it fresh enough for reapplication.

"We were looking for a more sustainable way of doing all things, while still being able to produce a world-class surface," says Buttar.

"That was the aim essentially."

It is early days, but so far, so good,

A week after the pitch was put in place, England women christened it with a dramatic win over New Zealand in September.

When Buttar and his team assessed the surface afterwards, they found that their new surface, which is 93% natural and 7% plastic yarn, compared to a 97%/3% mix previously, was sturdier than before.

There are too many variables to get too comfortable, however.

The main variable is the weather.

"For the best part of four or five months of the year, we're dancing with the devil in terms of the weather," said Buttar.

"We know it's going to be wet for a period, we know it's going to be cold, but we don't know when exactly.

"We just have to do our best to understand the forecast as well as possible, make sure we've got a plan A, B, C, and D and just adjust as the weather changes.

"It can be as simple as a weather front passing within two miles of the stadium changing everything."

There are also more leftfield concerns to nag Buttar.

He has extensive protocols in place to ensure that the sprinkler system doesn't activate mid-match, as has happened at other grounds.

In a previous role, in charge of Tottenham's White Hart Lane surface, Buttar arrived on a matchday morning to find a malfunctioning sprinkle head had blown a metre-wide hole in the centre circle.

His hurried stitching of new turf and cosmetic touch-ups were completed just in time to go undetected by television cameras.

At Twickenham, the local wildlife poses a challenge.

"There is a fairly decent urban fox population," says Buttar.

"Post-match, as quickly as the cleaners can get everything cleaned up and get all the food waste away, they're going to come in roaming.

"Sometimes the foxes will get their fill and then bury some for later.

"We've found half-eaten burgers, pies and bits and pieces dug into the pitch.

"Once we found an egg, perfect, with no damage whatsoever, which a fox had carefully put in a little hole and covered back up."

Egg-burying or egg-chasing, it all now happens on one of the highest-tech surfaces in the world.