while, until Bob Jones, a local greenkeeper, took over in 1982. Bob stayed for a year, but left to go back to greenkeeping. This allowed yours truly - Laurence Gale - to take up the post in May of 1983. When I arrived, the club did not even have a line marker for marking out the lines. We had to use a four inch brush and a can of paint to mark the lines - it was a very time consuming job, as you can imagine, although this method did deliver a very good line. So, one of my first purchases was a wheel-to-wheel dimple line marker to speed up the job. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, meeting some interesting characters down on the south coast.
I left in the summer of 1984, and a
new groundsman, Brian Shelley, took over the reins for a couple of years until Bob Jones returned to do his second stint at the club, which lasted over twenty
years until his retirement in September last year. To replace Bob, the club has taken on another ‘legend’ of the turf industry, appointing Phil Frost, former head groundsman at Somerset County Cricket Ground. During his twenty-three years at Taunton he won many national awards for the quality of his pitches. Phil says that he was a little
apprehensive at first but, after finding his feet, has nothing but praise for the way he has been looked after by the club since his arrival. He says the opportunity to work in a completely different environment has been very rewarding. It is not often one gets the opportunity to work at the highest level in two different sporting disciplines. Phil has four groundstaff to help him maintain the stadium and training pitches. He spends his time travelling between the two sites. His assistant,
Gareth Joyce, who worked under Bob Jones for four years, looks after the day to day running of the stadium pitch, while Jake Willis, Andrew Bailey and Robert Patrick work mainly at the training ground, looking after two full size pitches and other training areas. Unfortunately, the training ground is over twenty miles from Fratton Park, which is very time consuming for Phil. The Fratton Park pitch has changed very little in the last forty years. It was originally built over an ash base, which allows it to drain quickly, Surface water also runs off quickly due to a larger than normal crown. Kensett Sports have also sandmastered the stadium pitch to improve filtration rates through the soil profile.
When the club was in the Premiership, they invested money into their pitches. Pop up watering systems were installed, both at the training ground and Fratton
83
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