What do you know SQUIRT?


PETER POYNTON, Pitchcare member and sports turf contractor, on his introduction to the industry and some of his experiences


HAVING been in the industry for more years than I care to remember I have been involved in many renovations on most sports surfaces. My first experience of this was as a ten


year old helping my father on the ground we lived at. Every September, my brother and I would help shovel the soil onto the cricket pitches and bowling green. It was at this age that I really started taking an interest in groundsmanship and began to take note of the different soils used for different surfaces. It seemed to me the application was


always the same but the materials used were different.


I also remember my dad hollow tining


the bowling green by hand, it took almost a week and the sweeping up of cores was an endless task. So, it was no surprise when I left school I wanted a career in sports grounds and, at 15 years old, I got my first job with the local council parks department. Renovations on the council pitches was


virtualy unheard of, just two guys with a pedestrian spreader going from ground to ground spreading a thin layer of poor quality soil. We weren't allowed to do any spiking, scarifying or seeding prior to this as the foreman thought that leaf collecting was a more important job. It still makes me laugh years later; the


then foreman dressed a cricket square with a bowling green loam. I did point this out at the time but was


quite firmly told “what do you know squirt”. So, my whole experience on the council was a learning curve on how not to do your renovations. Ater a few years I then took a vacancy


at my father’s ground and got back to doing things the right way. We hollow tined the bowls green every


three years and, much to my relief, a machine was now hired to do the job along with a sweeper for the cores. However, we still barrowed and


shovelled and luted and matted all by hand, so it was still a lot of hard work, but it always gave great satisfaction when that last pile of soil was spread and the job was done. With four days to do three cricket squares and the bowls green by hand it was a challenge but we always managed it. The football pitch renovations consisted of slitting, seeding and top dressing the goal mouths by hand. Old sacking was used as germination sheets and then kept damp by watering. As the years progressed renovations became much easier with new and affordable machinery being introduced. There are many firms that now specialise in renovations only. For a contractor such as myself this is the best way as I just don’t have the time, so I contract out about 80% of my renovations. Some contracts have a minimal


budget for renovation so just a scarify and a few bags of seed is all that’s done. I find this very hard as I have great pride in my work, but if you are not getting


Days OFF! ... or what Pitchcare contributors get up to out of office hours


STEVE PATRICK, Head Groundsman at Blacburn


Rovers ... for 17 years now! When I first started I had two hand forks and a 38 year old Mastiff, and the rest, as they say, is history. Days off are usually taken up by walking in the park with my


partner Keeley and my three daughters Jessica, Emily, and Mollie. Alton Towers is also a real favourite for the girls as well, and trips up to the lake district which is only an hour away is wonderful. Watching my beloved Glasgow Rangers is another great joy for me but nowadays their fixtures


seem to clash with Blacburn’s. My ultimate ambition now is to learn how to fly fish, this is the only type of fishing I’ve not yet tried and the thought of being in the middle of a Scottish river with waders on and my fly rod, well I’d think I’d gone to heaven.


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paid the money what can you do? It also amazes me at some grounds


how they pay a fortune on renovation then have an unqualified volunteer maintaining the pitch throughout the season and spend nothing on it. With cricket in particular, an essential part of the following season’s playing conditions are dependant on a good renovation and winter/spring maintenance of the square.


Then again some cricket grounds


expect to use their square on a daily basis and by July all the pitches are bare and dead. This happened at a colleague’s ground; he had his square Koroed last autumn and was promised that the cricket would start first week of May. However, his first game was early April so, by the middle of May, all his pitches had been used and, in addition, he had schools games every day. The grass just hasn’t had the chance to recover and, of course, all the players now blame the groundsman for bare pitches. He has had almost 100 games already this year and has not been paid any extra for the games. Now, with the cricket and football seasons overlapping by a month in April and August, the time for putting renovations to bed in is getting shorter and shorter. We can’t be far off from all year round


football and March to October cricket. Hopefully by then I will have retired to Bali and I can leave it to everyone else!


PMP Sportspitch Maintenance


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