Senior AFL players have expressed a level of concern in the MCG's playing surface, which has gained high-level attention in recent weeks after the venue hosted a pair of Ed Sheeran concerts that exceeded 200,000 fans across two nights.
The decision to stage the pair of gigs at the MCG a fortnight prior to the AFL's season opening, which was held at the MCG before a second match at the same venue the following night, led to resurfacing of the ground's turf on the eve of home and away campaign.
Carlton and Richmond clashed at the home of football on Thursday night, with the result ending in a draw with both sides coming away with two premiership points and no injury concerns.
The same can't be said of Collingwood's 22-point win over Geelong, with Cats pair Tom Stewart and Sam De Koning both recording injuries after landing on the surface.
Geelong coach Chris Scott said the decision to host a pair of concerts at the magnitude of Ed Sheeran shows so close to the AFL season was an "own goal".
Scott's new captain Patrick Dangerfield stated the surface didn't feel like "a normal deck", with the surface 'inconsistent'.
"I thought it was pretty good considering there were 107,00 people on it a couple of weeks ago," Dangerfield told the 7 AFL broadcast on Saturday.
"Was it a normal deck? No, it wasn't. It was never going to be, but there were areas of inconsistency and I suppose in a game where players are running 12 to 15 kilometres there's gonna be times where you run over those different patches.
"It wasn't shifty. What it was is that there are different layers of the knitting of the grass. There are certain patches where it's really well-knitted. And then it's matched with something that's more soil, and the soil does shift more than what the grass would."
Carlton's Sam Docherty made similar comments days after playing on the MCG, with the Carlton defender revealing his surprise no injuries were sustained on Thursday night.
Speaking to 3AW, Docherty said the turf was "slippery", with players carrying some concern into the clash with Richmond.
"Having been a person who's done a couple of ACLs, I was extremely nervous pre-game when I walked out there and saw the differences in the turf from the stuff that's been there for a while and the newly laid stuff," Docherty said.
"I was surprised there weren't any injuries in our game.
"It's a fairly significant difference between the two turfs. I think with the newly laid stuff it was quite hard but did move a bit when you moved over, the grass spat up a bit.
"When you got onto the old MCG turf, I think because they put so much water trying to get the new grass to sit in, that was really soft.
"It definitely presented some level of risk in my eyes, the MCG obviously took that punt, they would have known what they were doing by taking the Ed Sheeran concert."
The Western Bulldogs and Melbourne both played on the MCG on Saturday night, however no injury concerns potentially relayed to the ground's surface arose.
Hawthorn and Essendon will feature in the fourth game at the venue in as many days when they go head-to-head on Sunday afternoon at 3:20pm.