Field of screams - will injury-hit Blues face Waratahs on dangerous surface?

Prized All Black Rieko Ioane will be forced to play on the dangerous shifting sand at Brookvale Oval on Saturday night. Photo / Photosport

The collapsing Blues could face a late shift in match venue against the Waratahs on Saturday night, as they try to continue New Zealand's winning streak against Australian sides.

The injury-hit Blues and erratic Waratahs are due to play on a suburban league ground with such a bad surface that it is being blamed for a series of bad knee injuries.

Brookvale Oval, the famous home to league's Manly Sea Eagles, has been described as a cow patch and treacherous.

Manly league chief executive Lyall Gorman has just admitted there is a potential problem at the sand-based ground, which has been re-named Lottoland under a sponsorship deal.

The Waratahs have called for a safety inspection which will take place today, conducted by the Northern Beaches Council which owns the ground. The Waratahs checked the field on Monday and supposedly had no problem with it. But NSW rugby reportedly raised "serious concerns" with the council on Tuesday.

The Sydney Football Stadium (called Allianz Stadium) was initially unavailable because the Sydney football club had booked it in case they made the A-league grand final, which they subsequently failed to do. There are suggestions of a late switch to the iconic ground.

But for now, the Waratahs and Blues are set to face each other on a surface where three Manly league players have suffered season-ending ACL injuries, with two similar injuries suffered there last season.

Gorman told The Australian: "I think that is a concern. The one thing we also want to do is talk to visiting clubs and see what their occurrences have been, if any. There is a possibility that two of our players have been wedged in a softer surface."

The local council refused to allow a club curtainraiser before Saturday night's Super Rugby clash because of the surface fragility.

On this week's NRL 360 TV show, veteran sports journalist Paul Crawley nominated the long-held concerns about the Brookvale surface as his "beef of the week" and said there should be no further matches there until it was fixed.

Gorman told the NRL site: "There was a paper done by [Dr] John Orchard in 2005 that sort of suggested the couch grass surface is not really great for professional sportsmen.

"So we hope to have something positive to take to (the council) by the back end of this week in regards to our research on it."

New Zealand teams have won 36 consecutive Super Rugby games over Australian sides but the Blues are in such a bad state that many pundits expect the Waratahs to end that streak this week.

The Waratahs head the Australian conference but were smashed 29 - 0 by the South African Lions in Sydney in their latest match.

The Warriors will be spared the Brookvale curse, with their match against "home" team Manly being played in Christchurch next month.