The cuts and dents on my knees still tell the story of a series of below-par performances on the plastic pitch at Deepdale, the home of Preston North End. I was playing for my local amateur team at the time. It was the late 1980s, a few years before the articificial surface was eventually ripped up.

Bumpy, abrasive and with a bounce that could send a football into space, it was painful to play on and a poor spectacle to watch. The Preston players wore long tights for every home game, which tells you all you need to know about the quality of the surface.

Few tears were shed then when plastic pitches were formally outlawed in the Premier League and Football League in 1995, relegated, in the process, to little more than a footnote in the history of English professional football.

But all that could be about to change. An increasing number of Football League clubs are thinking of rolling back the years and going artificial again, albeit using a modern, high-tech surface that bears little resemblance to its predecessor.

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Within five minutes of Aldershot Town being drawn against Manchester United in the fourth round of the Carling Cup, the League Two club's website crashed and did not recover for days.

Graham Brookland, lifelong supporter and the club's communications and website manager, had to sort out the problem, but not before noticing the expression on 13-year-old son Oliver's face.

"The look of pure joy on his face took me back to when I was a kid," said Brookland. "Oliver goes to school and gets ribbed for supporting the Shots but now he can saying that his team is playing Man United."

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On Thursday, Football League clubs voted in favour of proposals that could result in the Premier League picking up their best young talent for a fraction of what they currently pay. There were 46 votes in favour, 22 against, three no-shows and one abstention.

I'm told it was a reluctant "yes" from many of the clubs, who felt they had no choice. If they voted "no", the Premier League threatened to withdraw over £5m of funding that they give to lower league clubs each year for youth development.

It is all tied in with the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which will radically modernise youth development in England, introducing a four-tier academy system. The new deal will see every club receive an increase in their funding for a guaranteed four-year period, with the amount determined by their academy status.

Against a background of a reduced tv deal and an uncertain economic climate, most Football League clubs are understood to have welcomed the funding increase - but Peterborough director of football Barry Fry told me the Premier League's threat felt like blackmail.

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