Raising Standards

March 2019

Raising Standards

After the kindest Winter for many years, the pitches at the training ground and the Stadium pitch are in as good of condition as they have ever been at this time of year. Before pitch renovation begins, other areas of the Training Ground are going through their own improvements.

One of the areas I have wanted to improve for many years is the lawns. We are making a start with the grassed area around the academy building which has only ever had basic maintenance of mowing and very occasionally a little fertiliser, which is at the bottom of the spreader left over at the end of the day from feeding the pitches.

The area consisted of patchy grass and weeds on an uneven surface which looked OK from a distance but didn't meet my expectation for presentation in such a prominent area. 

The path and Old stop netting has been removed, sockets dug out, edges leveled and the whole of the surface has been koro'ed 3 times in an attempt to remove 50mm of thatch in some areas. Around the edges, a turf cutter has been used to get in where the tractors can't. The process has taken out all of the high areas and minimised the depth of the depressions, which will leave the area in a good position to hand mow.

I have chosen to seed the lawn with a fine leaved dwarf rye grass for an "ornamental" lawn look without the extra maintenance which fescue or bent grasses would have required.   

Before the work begun

Mid way through cleaning off the surface

After the surface removed with just the tidying up around the outsides to do

The Professionals training pitches have come through the winter in very good condition and it seems a shame to weed kill them off for the renovation starting in April. As we start taking them out of play, the team will train on the main pitch only for the last few weeks. At this time of year the turf can cope with the increased hours of play. 

A major benefit of have a drainage system installed is being able to move the water through the pitch reasonably quickly. although the pitches are of  indigenous soils, they drain well on the Bent Lane site, which helps retain grass coverage.

Torrential rain in a short amount of time can leave some pitches waterlogged on the academy side. Fortunately, scenes like the photo below are rare and it does drain within a few hours.

With renovations beginning in April, The first pitches to be renovated have been weedkilled. We do this to clean out any unwanted grass species so there is no chance of them surviving through the renovation. The only problem we may have is if there is seed in the soil already waiting to germinate. We may encourage dormant seed to germinate by disrupting the surface during the pitch renovation, but there is no way round that if we are going to do the work.
Renovations usually take around 10 weeks, allowing one week per pitch.We have placed material orders and are raring to go!

The stadium pitch is in excellent condition for the end of March. This is down to the amount for fixtures played on the stadium pitch and being fortunate with the weather around matchdays. 
Unfortunately,  we occasionally have issues with away goalkeepers marking the middle of the goal. This is a yellow card offence for intentially damaging the pitch. The referee has to see it, but they never do. This mark was made during warm up.

Intentional damage to the pitch marking the middle of the goal

Looking forward to the last stretch of the season, we have at least one more U23 game on the stadium pitch and possibly an U18 game along with the remaining three first team fixtures.