Bowls green with tennis courts beyond
the Professional Cricketers Association - the players union - to reflect the reality that turfcare professionals are now seen as part and parcel of ‘the team’. The Uxbridge site sits, like many a London counterpart, on heavy London clay. Whilst this material might provide an optimum substrate for cricket, which favours a hard base, it has caused untold problems for one of the club’s other sports facilities - the rugby pitch. Leased from Hillingdon Borough Council two years ago, the pitch has proved one of Vic’s and the club’s, biggest headaches. “We’ve managed only eleven games on it in two years,” he admits. The problems started following the lease agreement, when the council agreed to install a new drainage system to help solve the problem of drainage
from the clay-base pitch. Unfortunately, the design proved to be “insufficient and totally inadequate for the needs of the club and the teams that play there. We’re now locked in an ongoing battle with the council to remedy the problem, and a series of poor winters, coupled with the inadequate drainage, has resulted in few games being played and, ultimately, costing us a lot financially,” Vic explains. The council have since tried to remedy
the problem with sand banding, he goes on but, as the job was undertaken “at the wrong time of year”, it has been unsuccessful. “The pitch was getting so bad, we called in Keith Kent, head groundsman at Twickenham, to give us a second opinion. His diagnosis was a pitch that was totally unfit for purpose.” The upshot is that Uxbridge is forced to
Equipment is ‘basic’
hire other rugby pitches to complete its fixtures. Luckily for Vic, not all the site’s pitches cause as sticky a problem as rugby has. In contrast, tennis provision has come on leaps and bounds since Vic took over. “The grass courts here had always been treated as somewhat of an afterthought, so I made it a goal of mine to get them up to a good standard,” he states. The club has three grass courts and three tarmacadam ones, yet fears linger that the days of lawn tennis at Uxbridge may end soon as real grass gives way to all- weather surfaces. “I’ve had an ongoing battle with our tennis coach who’s been pushing the idea of replacing the grass with a hard surface,” explains Vic. “The thinking behind it is mainly due to the revenue capacity for hard courts over grass, as all-weather surfaces allow
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Suppliers of new Gi Cricket and Tennis Loams. Visit our website for introductory offers.
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www.green-infrastructure-ltd.co.uk Office: 0845 5191 586
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30 Connaught Street, Kettering NN16 8NU
Office: 0845 5191 586 Mobile: 07780 580379
greeninfrastructureco@gmail.com www.green-infrastructure-ltd.co.uk
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