For all grass sports the end of season renovation work is of paramount importance in preparing the surface for the rigours of the following season’s play
By DAVE SALTMAN
Cutting the cloth TO FIT
AT WOLVERHAMPTON Wanderers FC, the preparations start early in March. Discussions take place on how the pitches have performed and what work will be undertaken to improve them for the following season.
This season the training ground pitches suffered with the cold dry weather, certainly from Christmas onwards. The fact that we decommissioned the irrigation system in the late Autumn, to protect the more exposed sections, did not help our cause as the pitches didn’t receive as much winter rain as we would have normally expected. The long spell of cooler temperatures also held back any recovery that we would also have hoped for. At Molineux we suffered too. Up until Christmas the pitch looked as good as it ever had at that time of year. Then with consecutive cup matches being drawn at home in January, we endured seven
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games in little over a month and lost nearly 50% of the grass cover on the pitch. As the temperatures remained low, and the soil didn’t get a chance to warm, grass recovery was almost non-existent. All that said and done, the pitch held together well for games, and the early fears of a possible relay were allayed. So, in discussion with the Club
Secretary, Terry and Wayne (the Groundsmen) and our consultants, PSD, a specification and schedule was drawn up for the contractual works starting in May. Tenders were sent out and, by the beginning of April, prices were back with the club for consideration. It was felt that we could undertake much of the work in house, leaving one pitch at the Compton training ground and the main pitch at Molineux to the successful contractor.
The Molineux pitch has a history of various low cost remedial works in an
effort to stave off the inevitable re- construction (sometime in the future) and it has become a difficult beast to manage.
The pitch was moved east 40 metres in 1992 at the end of the new stadium construction. The existing soils were ameliorated with a quantity of sand to produce a reasonable growing medium. At this time an undersoil heating system was also installed and the hot water pipes were supposed to be bedded 300mm below the surface. Unfortunately some of the pipes have either risen over time, or were not installed correctly, and they have been hit with aeration equipment as near as 150mm from the surface. This, of course, makes any deep aeration impossible to undertake. Therefore the ground below 150mm has become very compacted and slow draining.
As with most clubs, Wolves work within
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