You could be forgiven for thinking that the Twickenham pitch only hosts a few international matches each year
L-r: Ian Ayling, Keith Kent, Andy Muir and Mike Gammett
December plus a couple of senior club matches before having to prepare for the start of the 2009 Six Nations tournament when England host Italy, France and Scotland. Typically, other fixtures include:
2006. Keith confesses that they provided a steep learning curve for himself and his staff but, after much trial and error, they now have a set routine in place that seems to achieve the desired results. This has to take into consideration the daily maintenance regimes, fixtures, training sessions and, most importantly, the weather.
When the schedule allows, some of the
areas, those in front of the South stand, have the lighting rigs on for 24 hours a day seven days a week. The other areas have the lights on varying from one to three days a week.
The pitch is constantly under pressure.
You could be excused for thinking that the Twickenham pitch only hosts a few international matches each year but, in reality, the pitch is in constant use. As well as the Investec Challenge series the stadium hosted the Varsity match in
• England Saxons • England U20s matches • England U18s matches • Middlesex Sevens Tournament • IRB Emirates Sevens • County Championships • Daily Mail Schools Championships • EDF Energy Cup games • Guinness Premiership matches • National U17 Tournament And then there is the small matter of concerts and corporate events to entertain.
As soon as the 2007/08 rugby season finished, the groundstaff undertook renovation work. This included fraise mowing, deep aeration using the RFUs Soil Reliever, and topdressing with Mansfield Sand. The pitch was then oversown with Rigby Taylor R14 and fed with a dose of 12:6:6 NPK fertiliser. During the growing season the grass
was kept at a height of 40mm using Dennis 36” mowers and fed and watered as required. This established a healthy sward coming into the Investec series of matches.
During the build-up to the All Blacks game Keith was pleased with how the pitch had performed, however, an incidence of leaf spot was causing him some concern. The grass plant was yellowing slightly, so he sprayed with a fungicide (Fusion) and implemented a
liquid feeding regime to keep on top of it.
With a heavy rain forecast for the All Blacks game Keith took the decision to vertidrain the pitch on Wednesday. He also had to make the pitch available for training sessions for both teams as well as moving the lighting rigs on and off as required. On Friday, both teams trained on the pitch. England did a full session, including kicking, whilst the All Blacks had a walk about for half an hour with only their kickers doing anything physical. With up to 15mm of rain forecast for
Friday Keith decided to leave the final pitch preparation until the morning of the match. To ensure I was at Twickenham for an early start on Saturday morning, I arranged to stay the night with Martin Sampson, Head Groundsman at the neighbouring Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School Playing Fields (the school is north of the river in Holland Park). The RFU utilise Martin’s grounds for hospitality and parking for over 1000 cars.
Match Day
At 8.00am I met up with Keith and he ran through the order of the day. We then went to see Ian, Andy and Mike who were busy getting the Honda pedestrian mowers ready. Andy then went on tunnel/changing room duty, so he was excused from mowing. That left the rest of us to begin the task of mowing the pitch. I had to pinch myself. Here I was
89
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 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140