Fiske’s Tale...


Scottish Premier League club, Aberdeen, battled the worst winter in thirty years, with snow falls of more than a foot, and weeks of sub zero temperatures.


Head Groundsman, Paul Fiske, battled to keep the pitch playable and to renovate the damaged turf in its wake, reports Jane Carley


E


astern Scotland was one of the worst affected parts of the country during this winter’s big freeze, yet Aberdeen


Football Club lost just one fixture - and that was due to police closing the icy roads around the Pittodrie Stadium rather than the condition of the pitch, which Head Groundsman, Paul Fiske, reports was fully playable that January night. But, the severe weather, and the demands placed by the team training on the club’s only heated pitch, inevitably took its toll.


The pitch at Pittodrie was


reconstructed five years ago, after a half a season’s ground sharing with Inverness Caledonian Thistle doubled the wear on the 100 year-old facility. Contractors, Greentech of Stirling, took the surface down 16in, relevelled and installed a drainage system with 10m laterals. Then 8in of sand and 8in of rootzone was used to construct the pitch, with the work finishing just six weeks before the first game. From frequently losing games to waterlogging, the new pitch represented a dramatic improvement, until the most severe winter for thirty years struck. Paul, who joined Aberdeen Football Club fourteen years ago from a greenkeeper’s job at Moray Golf Club, Lossiemouth, explains: “The first snow fell on 16th December, but we had to


prepare the pitch for one match and four training sessions in fourteen days, and kept the undersoil heating on for twenty- two days.”


In January the snow lay for three weeks


C. In total, Aberdeen endured eight weeks of snow, yet Paul managed to produce playing conditions for four training sessions and four matches in one three week period. “When the team were training for the Scottish Cup match on Friday 8th January, the temperature was minus 11O


and, from the middle to the end of the month, temperatures averaged minus 10O


C


at ten o’clock in the morning,” Paul recalls. “The pitch was so white that you could not see the lines yet, due to the heating, it was soft enough to train on. Afterwards, we brushed the surface and put the covers back on ready for the next day’s game with Heart of Midlothian. On Sunday, the team trained again and, although there was grass coverage, you could see that the sward had gone.” The pattern was repeated three weeks


later. Paul had to clear the stadium itself, snow ploughing and gritting as well as preparing the pitch for the game with Motherwell on 30th January, and a fixture with Falkirk on 2nd February was followed by two days’ training in sub zero temperatures, once again giving the grass a battering.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132