Aussie Turf Managers visited top UK venues as part of a development programme linked with the ECB through Pitches Consultant Chris Wood
Rob Savedra with losing (sorry, had to put that) Australian Ashes Captain, Ricky Ponting
Aussies ENJOY a WINNING tour!
t wasn’t just the Aussie cricketers that visited the UK this summer. Three members of the Australian Ground and Garden Managers Association also made the trip as part of a development programme linked with the ECB via Pitches Consultant Chris Wood, who visited Australia and spoke at the Association's conference in June 2004. Rob Savedra from Wesley College, Melbourne, Bill Sciarretta from Scotch College Melbourne and Warwick Starr from Bankstown Council, Sydney spent three weeks touring schools and sporting venues across the country as well as visiting Cranfield Soil Science Laboratory and the STRI at Bingley. They received funding from their employers to take part in the exchange, which aims to give groundsmen from both countries the opportunity to compare working conditions and practices and to find out whether they are affected by similar issues at work.
I A gruelling itinerary took them right
around the UK and as it coincided with a number of sporting events, provided the group with a number of ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences such as meeting Aussie cricket captain Ricky Ponting out on the square at The Oval and being driven in a golf buggy down the fairway at St. Andrews during The Open. Rob Savedra is grounds manager at
Wesley School, a traditional school in Melbourne which is the largest in the country with more than 3,500 pupils. It also sets the benchmark for sports surface standards, hosting the training sessions for the World XI Elite cricketers prior to their series of One Day Internationals against Australia earlier this month.
He’d wanted to find out whether budgets, running costs, machinery and working conditions were on a par with those in Australia and to find out about the relationships that British grounds managers have with their employers, in
aren’t valued in the same way as they are in Australia. They don’t seem to enjoy the same level of communication with their managers as we do.”
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“I got the impression that grounds managers in the UK
comparison to his experiences at home. “It has been fascinating to see at first hand, some of the turf management techniques used by the guys over here”, Rob commented. “Take cricket preparation for example. The weather’s so different in the UK - either too wet or too dry and there’s a real danger of over- rolling. We’re luckier in that with 80% clay content in the soil we’ll roll just before a match to close the cracks. The cricket groundsmen over here have a very difficult job to do.” “I got the impression that grounds managers in the UK aren’t valued in the same way as they are in Australia. They don’t seem to enjoy the same level of communication with their managers as we do.”
“I was surprised by the amount of
grounds without irrigation and some having to make do with travelling sprinklers. In Australia, every pitch would have an irrigation system. I was also surprised by how little fertiliser is
Mick Hunt at Lord’s
With
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