Everton Football Club have recently moved from their former training ground at Bellefield, built back in the 1960s, to a moderrn £14 million training complex at Finch Farm in the Halewood area of Liverpool. Kevin Marks visited the club for a tour of the new facility.
TOFFEE DELIGHT!
I Training ground staff
arrived at Finch Farm on a bright early spring morning in pessimistic mood because, in the previous five days, this
Premiership club had been knocked out of the UEFA Cup and lost away to Fulham. I expected to be met by doom and gloom but, while waiting in reception, I bumped into an old acquaintance, Jimmy Martin, Everton’s Kit Manager, who greeted me in his customary ‘scouse’ manner, in terms which could not possibly be printed in this magazine! Jimmy lightheartedly claims he runs the place and, after establishing that I was meeting Robbie Gillespie, the Deputy Head Groundsman, he was on the phone to get him across from the groundstaff ’s facility to meet up with me. While walking back across the car park,
Superb new groundstaff facility
Robbie explained that David Moyes’s senior squad made the permanent switch from Bellefield in October last year and were then joined by the Everton Academy players and staff early in November. He told me that it’s the first time the senior squad and the entire Academy set-up have been housed in one location. Robbie reports to Bob Lennon, Everton’s Head Groundsman since 1988, and manages a team of seven at Finch Farm. The former 55-acre strawberry farm is undoubtedly one of the finest training facilities in Europe and features ten grass pitches, one of which is floodlit, along with an additional floodlit synthetic pitch and specialist training areas for fitness work and goalkeepers. It also has an exact recreation of the club’s stadium pitch at Goodison Park. Inside the training complex there are
Dedicated training areas 32
extensive facilities for both the senior squad and the Academy players, including a modern gym with high-tech equipment operated by a memory card encoded with each individual player’s
fitness schedule. There is also hydrotherapy pools, a spa, sauna, physiotherapy rooms, a media centre and a video lounge including a video editing suite. Completing the facilities are changing rooms, administration offices, separate restaurants for the senior squad and Academy players and a 70 metre x 40 metre synthetic indoor training pitch. Normally, the groundstaff are the
‘forgotten few’ when it comes to facilities and can often be found in poor, shabby premises which are obviously an afterthought. At Finch Farm the first building you see on entering the complex is the groundstaff facility. Impressively modern with drying room and showers, it contains an eclectic mix of equipment for managing this huge complex. “We were involved and consulted right
from the beginning of the project back in 2006,” said Robbie. “Bob Lennon had considerable input at the planning stage and it’s paid off. In hindsight, it would have been good to have had a slightly bigger building, but the facilities overall are excellent.”
Bob Lennon has a longstanding
relationship with Burrows GM, the Ransomes Jacobsen groundscare dealer located at Leyland near Preston. As you would expect there’s a predominance of orange equipment, most of which is new, and includes two Jacobsen LF3800 ride on five cylinder mowers, a Jacobsen Tri- King, two Ransomes Mastiff 36” walk- behind mowers, a trailed Turfco WideSpin 1530 topdresser, two Iseki tractors and an E-Z-GO MPT utility vehicle for running around the site. Other equipment includes a John
Deere Aerocore, a Kubota B1550 compact tractor, a Wiedenmann XF 1.6 deep aerator, a Spearhead flail, a selection of Mountfield and Hayter small rotary mowers and a Wessex brush for the two
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132