good turn!


for his team when they returned to commence work full-time on the six new wickets and the existing five that had been turned. “We were amazed that, despite all the snow and ice, there was little damage on the square,” he reports, “and were expecting to find at least some snow mould, but it seems that it was so cold that the fungus didn’t have chance to thrive.” The heavy, prolonged rain that had hit the north-west in late October, through November was the culprit for the only damage inflicted on the new strips. “Once the final stages of the work were completed in October, and the seed was sown, we witnessed a sustained period of rain which washed away much of the seed,” he explains. “As we were in no position to do anything over the winter, we only realised the scale of the bald area in late January, so we took to work immediately and began hand forking the affected patches to get the seed back in and allow it to establish as soon as we could. The hand


forking continued on the old five wickets as a way of aerating and starting things again without being too intense.” The effects of the prolonged rainfall have meant that work has started slower than Matt would have liked. Cutting has only recently resumed, he says, and he stresses that he’s keen to prevent any damage by “overdoing it” or starting to cut too severely so early on. “Conditions are ideal to use the Paladin


now,” Matt says, having begun using the mower in early March. “Over the next few weeks, we’ll start rolling with the Allett as the ground firms up a bit but, for the time being, our primary focus will be on getting rid of the baldness on the five old wickets, which, after more than a month, is starting to show some positive signs of regrowth.


Since the end of January, Matt had left


the groundsheets down permanently, so that further rainfall would pose him no added problems and would allow him to focus on getting back up to speed. Like most professional grounds teams,


when factors conspire against you and the weather takes a turn for the worst, modern technology can often be on hand to lift some of the burden. The scale of the bald problem at Old


Trafford was such that Matt resorted to bringing in lighting rigs to help speed the recovery process on the threadbare strips. Yet, due to the legal proceedings that the club went through at the end of summer 2010, following the controversial deal signed with Tesco, budgets “had to be cut back across the board”, which included some of the planned turfcare investment.


“It had been in the pipeline for a while to get a new SLG lighting rig, something we would make real use of with the volume of rain we get up here and knowing that we would have sixteen wickets to look after for the new season,” explains Matt. “The club’s financial problems were such that it just couldn’t go ahead, as the rigs are usually a highly expensive


59


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