Park, with the stadium pitch having them around the perimeter, although they still rely on a hose and sprinkler heads to water the centre. With the club’s recent and much publicised financial woes, plus a drop into the Championship, budgets are, understandably, tight, so Phil has to be careful with what he spends. Last year’s end of season renovations were, as Phil states, “intelligent on a tight budget!” The pitch was scarified using a tractor mounted Graden, sand mastered, topdressed with 50 tonnes of 80/20 sand soil dressing and oversown with Johnson Premier seed mixture. A similar renovation was carried out at the training ground, where one of the pitches is a fibre sand pitch, and the other soil based.
At the end of this season, Phil is keen to fraise mow all the pitches, aiming to clean out any poa and thatch, leaving a clean surface for reseeding but, again, this will be dictated by available finances. The equipment used is not untypical.
Two Dennis G860s are used for mowing the stadium pitch, and a John Deere Aercore performs ongoing aeration. Two
John Deere pedestrian rotary mowers are used for cleaning up the pitch. The training ground pitches are cut with a John Deere triple mower.
Every morning, Phil drags a hosepipe over the sward to remove dew. He and Gareth mow the stadium pitch three or four times a week, at 25mm during the season and 30mm in the close season. Feeding is based around a four week
programme, generally using a granular 12:6:6 NPK ratio fertiliser, backed up with liquid feeds as and when required. As for pests and diseases, Phil has seen some nematode activity and an attack of anthracnose. After the recent snow, some fusarium appeared; a dose of Chipco Green helped on this occasion. Aeration revolves around the use of the vertidrain fitted with 3
/4 ”solid tines to a
300mm depth, the Aercore and some knife tines. However, since Phil has been in charge, he has reduced the use of the tractor and also cut back on aerating near to match day, the aim being to both keep adverse weight off the pitch and avoid it cutting up. Like most of the country, the last two months of 2010 were testing times for
groundstaff, with snow and freezing temperatures causing a lot of extra work moving frost covers on and off the pitch. However, their efforts were not in vain as, on the day of my visit, the Fratton Park pitch looked in excellent condition for the time of the year, with over eighty percent grass cover.
It was certainly good for me to be back on the pitch after so many years, reliving fond memories of my days at the club. Paul Weld, who at the time was commercial manager, is now the Club Secretary and we had a chat about old times.
I had arrived on Friday afternoon, a day ahead of the game against Derby County to observe Phil and his staff prepare for the game. I was booked into the Etap Hotel, right next to the ground, so there were no worries about car parking and getting to the ground in the morning. By Friday afternoon, the pitch had been mown width ways and was being watered.
Match day
8.00am - I arrived at the ground to find Phil and Gareth cutting the pitch length
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