The British public seem to think we should be participating and succeeding in, or hosting, every world event, an extraordinary amount of the workload, which would lead us to that, is being left in the hands of an unskilled, underfunded volunteer workforce
budgets and availability of access. Put simply, if you are spending approximately £2,500 per annum of fund-raised money on trying to maintain your football pitch, is it prudent to then, at certain times of the year, have the goalmouths roped off, thereby denying access to the local after-school children who just want to have a kick-around? It is, after all, ‘their’ pitch and likely that their families are the more significant source of funding than the weekend teams for whom it is being so carefully maintained. This problem continues out of season as well. This spring’s renovation saw whole areas effectively out of commission as we attempted to restore the condition of the pitch after the dreadful winter, which even the South-West of England had to endure.
Our pitch, which is regularly verti- drained and sanded, and therefore considered to be a ‘good-drainer’, was permanently wet, frozen or covered in snow. Between goalmouths it was hard to find the grass at the end of the season, which, this year, saw us host 48 football matches, down from 2008-09’s highpoint of 64 games. 40-45 games per season is probably about the right amount given the restoration budget is established at £2500. Pitch hire fees are another contentious issue. There are, apparently, facilities where you can be charged anything up to £70 per game. We charge adults £30, a figure that is slightly lower than the average in the area. For that, the teams will find they have nothing to do except wash out the changing-rooms, put the corner-flags away and lock up. And woe betide them if they don’t mop out the changing-rooms - they have been dragged out of the pub in the past!
Our maintenance schedule is fairly straightforward. We mow weekly, using either a Kubota BX 2300 or, as often as possible for Dynamos games, the old Dennis Premier 36" will make an appearance. We chain-harrow monthly, if possible, and we have an ancient SISIS spiker which gets used when conditions allow.
Another useful piece of kit is a 36" sarell spiker/roller. Lines are marked using a spray line marker, incidentally the same one that the Pitchcare community encouraged me to buy all those years ago when I first joined to get a few hints on groundsmanship! Thanks.
Annual maintenance goes out to local contractors. We try to have it verti-drained three times every two seasons.
Although this isn't enough, it’s what we can afford. We also have between 50 and 80 tonnes of sand topdressing added most years. This year, we have experimented with rubber- crumb in the high wear areas between goalmouths. We will be watching carefully and monitoring the outcome. Probably the most visually useful maintenance procedure that we carry out is weed killing - we use a local specialist for this, as we do for hedge trimming. The committee are grateful to The
Football Foundation for their help in funding the pavilion and are aware of out commitments back to the footballing community. It has to be said, though, that a lot is being asked of voluntary
organisations and, given that the sports mad British public seem to think we should be participating and succeeding in, or hosting, every world event, an extraordinary amount of the workload, which would lead us to that, is being left in the hands of an unskilled, underfunded volunteer workforce.
All governing bodies now talk about the benefits to the community of people being involved in leisure pursuits and recreational games. Wouldn’t it help the voluntary sector provide these facilities if, say, the local authority or the County FA could use their purchasing-power and help affiliated organisations secure much lower prices on their consumables or contractor services. That would be very easy to establish and maintain, and would show an almost instant return for those who were able to affiliate.
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