“At £1.44 per hour the cost equates to £514 per annum”


of drought, the forecast was for thunderstorms and heavy rain coming in. I again convinced the club to put their hands in their pockets. I felt that the sward needed an immediate boost of nitrogen to thicken it up quickly. 12 bags of Scotts 12:0:9 were ordered and thankfully were delivered without delay. So, thanks has to go to Julie Wall and Avoncrop Amenity Products for their excellent service. The forecast for that particular


Tuesday was thunderstorms gradually creeping up from the southwest that were due to hit us by evening. I couldn’t wait to finish my regular day job that day (I work part time at the club) to enable me to get to the club to get the fertiliser on. As I had striped the pitch over the weekend, the mowing bands were used as my guide. I placed out the bags ready and set about the task. With two bags to go I could hear the thunder in the distance with the odd flash of lightning catching my eye. For someone who has a bit of a phobia about lightning strikes, it was a bit unnerving I can tell you! Within an hour of me finishing, the storms hit and the rain began. How about that for timing?! Within a few days the pitch began to respond and with regular mowing, thickened up a treat. At times I was cutting everyday until, low and behold, yet another dry spell descended upon us.


As I stated earlier, the club are


metered as regards use of water. I explained to the powers that be that, although I understood the financial situation, the pitch needed as much water as necessary. I explained that good end of season renovation work needs to be followed up with remedial work which includes irrigating as and when necessary. There were no arguments and so I reset my water timer accordingly.


This timer has been so useful to me over the last few years. Basically, it fits to our outside half inch mains tap and can be set up to automatically come on at different times and different frequencies. I would advise smaller clubs to invest in one of these small battery operated units as they can prove invaluable. Around this time we had organised for someone to come to the club to give us advice on possible rebates on water application. I met Andrew Willis from the company Auditel (www.auditel.eu.com) on a very warm and dry Monday evening, which was very apt to say the least. He specialises in attempting to save clients money in the utility areas such as energy, fixed/mobile communications, water etc. He took meter readings before and after a timed period of irrigation. We then sat down to discuss how often I use the sprinkler. For obvious reasons this was a difficult question for me to answer. We agreed that a conservative estimate of watering three hours per day over a seventeen week period was a fair assumption. Based on this fact, the cost of watering is £1.44 per hour. This equates to £514 per annum. Further to this, I have recently had an e-mail from Andrew to let me know that we are due an inspection from the water company technical expert in the forthcoming weeks. This is great news for us as any potential saving on outlay is beneficial to the club.


All the above leads to what I wish to add from here on in. A lot of clubs, especially at our “grass roots” level, generally have to keep a keen eye on income and expenditure. Many have to rob Peter to pay Paul. This season I was asked to try


What a result!


DESPITE being overshadowed by cricket, the opening matches of the football season have got underway.


This season, thanks to the campaigning of Pitchcare and the backing of the professional clubs’ groundsmen, a new set of guidelines relating to warm-ups and warm-downs have been introduced. Time limits and specific areas for the players to use have been laid down.


It might take some time, however, for the message to sink in, and some gentle reinforcing by the groundstaff may be necessary. These are reports from a couple of League Groundsmen:- “We had Brighton on Saturday and the


goalies came out at 2.00pm, but once I pointed out to them the new rules they just walked about until 2.15pm. I have put up a big laminated sign in each dressing room for all to see but it is up to us to encourage all teams to stick to the proposals straight away so they know it's everybody applying them. Just be polite and firm and put up a sign in the dressing rooms so you can refer back to them.”


“The most damage caused on our pitch was by a warm down by players of the away team who had been on the bench and not used! I went out there and


showed them the Football League rules in black and white, and they were gutted. They subsequently did a ten minute run and cleared off, which was a result.”


The guidelines are there, so the advice to all Head Groundsmen is to use them. It might also be advisable to stick the guidelines on the mirror in the dressing rooms. That way you can be sure that the players will have seen them! This assumes, of course, that they are capable of reading!


Taken July 11th 2005. Note our brand new goals!


to save the club £1,000 to pay for new goalposts and nets for the new season. I did manage to do so by various means, although certain things have suffered as a result and it cannot happen next season. Although the above figures are estimated the costs could quite easily be higher, especially if the summers of the future are longer and hotter as some experts predict. As a club we are now having to look at ways and means of saving money in all areas and not just applied irrigation. I look on this level of football as the feeder route to higher level football and so it is essential for us Groundsmen to provide as good a surface as possible with the means available to us. I recently visited a local professional club and was quite envious of the fact that the Groundsman there had sprinklers all over his pitch ready for use, and his pitch looked superb. And here’s me with my one sprinkler! Don’t get me wrong, without it, the pitch would be awful. There are travelling sprinklers that are available for use with domestic water supplies such as ours but again the cost implications come into the equation. The more water that is used, the more it costs the club. It’s as simple as that. We are now having discussions about redirecting rainfall from stands and buildings within the club to a container of some sort. Once


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