L
eeds United Football Club has certainly weathered the storms - from financial difficulties in 2007 to the resulting sanctions by the
Football League, putting the club 15 points adrift before they even started the season. But, showing typical northern grit, they rallied and, with promotion to the Championship for 2010/11 and nomination for the Elland Road stadium as a potential 2018 world cup venue, things are looking up. However, for Head Groundsman Norman Southernwood, who has been at the club for twelve years, it is business as usual at Elland Road. “All football groundsmen aim to
present the best possible pitch, regardless of where their team is in the league. Even at the lower levels, the playing surfaces are maintained to the highest standards,” he comments. “It’s sixteen years since the drainage was renewed here, and the undersoil heating is quite old too, but it is a matter of managing any issues and producing the best possible turf for the job.” An intensive programme of end of season renovations help - with the top half inch of the surface koroed off in May by contractors
Premier Pitches, and this year, new approaches were made to deal with compaction. “There are iron pans in several
areas, and my aim is to break these up and improve drainage. We tried a Gwazae deep probe aeration unit to blast air into these areas, but it didn’t really work, so we then used an Earthquake decompactor, working at 8in deep, before adding limestone and seaweed granules and re-seeding,” Norman explains.
Seeding was carried out on 26th May and, a month later, the sward looks healthy and is growing well - it is all that Norman can do to keep on top of it on his own while his assistant is on holiday! “I like to cut with a rotary for the first two to three weeks. With the water and fertiliser, the new grass grows quickly, although you have to be careful not to wash all the valuable nutrients out in this dry weather.”
The difficulty with pitch
renovations, Norman suggests, is the increasingly short closed season, particularly where clubs are involved in play-offs. “When I started out as a
groundsman at Halifax Town, the local finals were played the week after the FA Cup, which was never
Jane Carley meets Norman Southernwood, Head Groundsman at Leeds United, and finds a man who ...
Leeds...
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