Do Your Club's Soccer Goal Nets Need UV Protection?
You may spend a lot of time choosing exactly the right kind of nets for your club's soccer goals. If you're buying new nets or goals, then it is important to choose nets that will last for as long as possible.
This isn't just a question of choosing the right netting material, design or size, you also need to consider weather issues. While protecting your goal nets from the sun may seem weird at first, this can be important.
If you live in a hot area and the sun will spend a lot of time beating down on your nets, then using netting with built-in UV protection is actually a good investment. The fibres in these nets have either been impregnated or coated with UV-ray inhibitors. What are the benefits of buying these nets?
Minimise Sun Damage
If your goals stay up all the time, then they take a beating from the sun every day. While this may not seem like a big deal—your nets aren't likely to overheat or get sunburned—sun damage can give you problems.
Persistent exposure to scorching sunlight exposes your goals' nets to a lot of UV rays. These rays can actually damage the nets and, ultimately, make them unusable.
For example, if nets get too much sun exposure, then their materials can become brittle and dry. The netting may break when you simply touch it and not just when a power shot hits the back of the net.
This isn't a problem you can fix. Once your nets get into this state, they'll just continue to degrade, and more areas will break off. Eventually, your nets might be full of holes. They won't do much of a job of keeping balls in the net when your teams play matches.
Minimise Colour Fading
If you've decided to give your goals some extra va-va-voom, then you may have decided to buy nets in your club colours. While these nets make a statement when you put them up, their impact may not be so great after a few months spent in the sun.
The sun's UV rays will fade parts or all of the colours on your nets. They'll start to look scruffy and old before they should. If the nets have UV protection, they'll hold their colours for longer.
While some soccer goal manufacturers automatically supply nets that have UV-ray protection, not all do this as standard. It's worth checking if the nets you're currently looking at have this feature and, if they don't, you may want to switch to ones that do.
