Quakers NOTES ...
I
Gary Ventress has gone ‘back to his roots’ as Head Groundsman at the Darlington Arena, home of the Quakers. Here he talks about the reasons why he got back into football and the challenges that faced him on his return
76 spent six years as the Head
Groundsman at Roker Park, the former home of Sunderland FC, before taking up the Head Greenkeeper’s position at the George Washington Golf and Country Club for fifteen years. I enjoyed my term there developing the course and infrastructure but, for some reason, had a yearning to get back into football.
When the job at Darlington FC was advertised, in the summer of 2007, I knew that, if I got the job, I’d be taking a bit of a pay cut, but the thought of getting back into the game was too much to pass up. And so, here I am. I took over the ground from the previous Groundsman, Andy (Tommo) Thompson, who has decided to concentrate on being the club’s ‘kit man’ and Pitchcare's Dave Saltman, who had been helping the club in the interim period ... called the start of the season!
The pitch had been returfed that summer, so no renovations had taken place, and Dave had warned me that the west wing was holding a lot of water and needed more investigation.
Last season was a learning curve and I undertook a lot of hole digging to ascertain that the lateral drains on that side of the pitch weren’t actually connected to the main drain. The water on one half of the pitch was, therefore, backing up from the drains
and keeping the surface saturated. I was aerating the pitch on a very regular basis down to about 7” (175mm) but this only alleviated the water problems slightly and the wing continued to cut up badly during the season.
When digging down it was clear to see the original pitch construction and profile make-up. There are undersoil heating pipes installed, although we don’t have a boiler or pumps for these to be connected to! Not only that, but the capped pipes are actually attached to sheets of corrugated steel under the surface.
The pitch is built on a gravel carpet, which is good, but the depth of rootzone is slightly too shallow. At best we have around 250mm, which is perhaps a few centimetres short of being the right depth. What this means is that the theory of a suspended water table isn’t able to be put into practice, and the water doesn’t get pulled from the surface quickly enough.
I installed some additional drains hoping that they would take some of the water away, but much of the time we had to rely on our rain covers to keep the rain off and get the games on.
In the close season I brought in White Horse Contractors to do the renovations and install a new main drain. The existing one was buried under the surrounding tarmac track and it would have involved too
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