FOREST TRUMPS!
When Nottingham Forest’s previous incumbent packed his bags and headed for the bright lights of the big city, in stepped Ewan Hunter to take on the role of Head Groundsman at the club made famous by Brian Clough
I
t has been a busy season for us to date with over eighteen games played at the City Ground since the start of the season back in August. We have just completed a run of six games in eighteen days and I am pleased to say the pitch is holding up well, especially after the dismal weather we had during the renovation period in May and June. My staff have worked extremely hard during the summer getting the pitches up to speed after our end of season renovations. There are five staff ,plus myself, who work together to oversee all the day to day management of our pitch facilities at the stadium, academy and training grounds. Craig Sharp and George Carless work at the training ground where the first
team and reserves train. Chris Moody and Craig Watson look after the academy ground which caters for the youth teams, while my deputy Matt Tietjen and I look after the stadium pitch. However, we quite often find ourselves being moved around on occasions to help one another out. On match days we work together to ensure the pitch is at its best for the game. Our renovations have been quite intensive this year. Apart from the normal cleaning up of the surfaces, and reseeding, we have installed some new secondary drainage at the academy ground and upgraded the stadium pitches automatic watering system with the fitting of six new infield sprinkler heads. The work was undertaken by Hewitts.
Stadium Pitch Renovations
The work centred around the installation of infield pop up watering sprinklers. The reason for doing this was to aid the efficiency and control over watering and, more importantly, to enable us to water the pitch at half time during matches. The previous method of dragging hoses out was impractical. Basically, the work involved koroing (fraise mowing) off the top 15-20 millimetres of vegetation, installing the new irrigation pipe work and fitting six new Hunter 141 sprinkler heads into the pitch. Once this work was completed 60 tonnes of MM 355 sand was topdressed onto the surface, vertidrained and brushed in several directions. The pitch was then oversown with Advanta MM 60 grass
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