Consultant agronomist, Gordon Jaaback, asks what value are modern well-equipped schools if outdoor sports facilities are neglected?
THE WINTER PITCH CRISIS O
Authorities just do not seem to grasp the fact that neglected sports pitches are the beginning of a chain reaction ...
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nly on the sportsfield can children experience a microcosm of life - learning to succeed, to fail, to win, to lose and, above all, to respect one another. The Olympics are just around the corner; there is much hype on the need to nurture sport at school and, yet, there is not the interest and/or budget to provide the facilities in a good playing condition when we need them most. Football is played around the globe. It can be fun on virtually any surface, provided it is dry and relatively even, though grass cover is the ideal surface - especially at the higher levels. Here in Britain football is essentially a winter sport and wet cool conditions prevail throughout the winter months. Topsoil is generally clay in texture and becomes waterlogged and slippery when saturated. Without proper attention to drainage and maintenance deterioration is inevitable. The surface seals up, depressions fill with water, the soil softens, there is nowhere for the water to go and so a quagmire develops. The long and the short of the matter is the fact that top soils are almost entirely impermeable clay loam soils that just get wetter and wetter with virtually no evaporation through from November to March. Surface water must be drained away quickly before it has time to soften the hard surface. In dry conditions clay soils are firm and support good grass growth. The topsoil can be replaced with a porous sandy medium that in turn needs irrigation to get through the hot summer months - but only the premier clubs can afford this investment.
The troubling apathy
In the US all schools and college sports facilities are maintained to high standards, yet somehow, in Britain, there is virtually no concern over the playing conditions. In fact, authorities and people generally, are not concerned with weedy lawns, parks, parking areas, pathways and open spaces - let alone the condition of sports pitches. This disregard extends to the attitude to litter. The budget just does not incorporate these costs and there is little interest among local authorities in understanding the predicament and budgeting
The only practical solution is to promote rapid run-off and enable water to by-pass the surface clay medium and collect in narrow close-spaced slit drains that hold and seep this water into piped lateral drains that remove it from the playing surface. A number of methods are currently employed including injected and excavated slits back-filled with stone and sand or sand alone. Synthetic plastic extrusions sealed with geotextiles are also used. Today, technology has developed maintenance practices that can ensure sound conditions during the wet winter months. Naturally, the attainable can only be achieved at a cost. These methods have been widely published and are well known. It all comes back to what price we are prepared to pay to provide and maintain sports pitches which are, in fact, the lifeblood for developing children. This is where a strange anomaly appears - why do the attitudes of the British and the Americans differ so much in this context?
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