youngest full-time professional football groundsman, yet handling the tasks alone has not fazed him, due in a large part, he says, to the support and commitment the club has already shown him. “There is a real commitment to aim high here, and the club makes no secret that it wants to be pushing up the leagues in the coming few years, and part of this plan is ensuring that the pitch is first class,” he explains. “Financially, the club are in a good position and happy to invest in the tools that make my job easier. That’s not to say that you can ever be wasteful. I have to choose my machines and products carefully, based on what I think will be best in the long term for the surface and what is affordable,” Ben continues. “So far, they’ve let me take the lead and allowed me to suggest what I think is needed, which is invaluable if you’re new to the role, and it shows that there is trust and respect between us.” While Crawley have only just entered the top leagues, in reality, the club has been far removed from the ‘standard’ non-league outfit since 2005, when a local business, the SA Group, bought the club and decided to take it full-time, with an eye on pushing towards the Football League. The next three years proved traumatic, however, and mounting financial difficulties meant that, in 2008, the club were bought again to save it from liquidation, this time by Prospect Estate Holdings Limited, who alleviated the
club of its financial worries and set in motion a new plan to improve their fortunes on and off the pitch. Last year marked a fresh start, as co- owner Bruce Winfield announced that the club’s £1m debt had been cleared and that manager, Steve Evans, would be given funds to assemble a squad capable of securing promotion to the Football League.
It was in this year too that Crawley
broke Conference records for a player fee - an estimated £250,000 - a move that brought criticism from some quarters, but soon quashed them with the estimated £2m that the club amassed from their FA Cup run.
Crawley tasted the glitz and glamour that top-flight football brings and it hopes to hit the heights again next season. For Ben though, there is little time to rest as his work is already well underway. With end of season renovation already completed, he soon turned to remedying some of the most pressing issues with the pitch. “The first task for anyone coming into a new job is to find out exactly what you’re working with and set out a programme of how to deal with it,” says Ben. “My immediate aim has been to prepare the pitch for the pre-season matches in July so, by the first week in the month, all the renovation will have been completed and the new surface ready for play.”
The two biggest issues have been drainage and compaction, says Ben, although he insists they should be
reasonably easy problems to solve in the longer term. Prior to him joining, pitch maintenance responsibilities lay with Crawley Borough Council, which had carried out the work since the club moved to Broadfield in 1997. Problems of compaction had accumulated over the years, therefore. “The root of it was really due to a lack of aeration, which meant the soil had compacted and the water sat on top and drained much slower than it should,” Ben explains. “The club’s drainage system is actually only a few years old, and is very good so, once the aeration programme is underway, we should be fine.” Root depth was another concern of
Ben’s - it was too shallow for the kind of intense action likely in the Football League. “There isn’t enough under the surface to see us through what may well be another harsh winter. I need to start a regular aeration programme as soon as possible. Ben hopes to invest in a Toro Procore, or something similar, to carry out regular tining, which, weather depending, should set everything on the right track soon, so we can deal with poor winter weather if it strikes.” Ben clearly hails from a breed of
turfcare professionals who like to be confident in knowing they can regularly trawl the available products, services and suppliers to ensure they buy exactly what they want, at the right price, while also outsourcing the larger jobs like spraying and vertidraining when necessary. “I haven’t yet found one manufacturer
“No signifi cant differences in the cut quality in terms of shredding, rough cut edges or turf die back between the Merlin 320 rotary mower and the control (reel type) mower”
.
Mitchell, A. (2011). Trimax Merlin 320 Mower Trial. NZ Turf Management Journal, 26(2), 20-24.
Unit 11B, Hill Farm Estate, Irthlingborough Road, Little Addington Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN14 4AS, United Kingdom
PHONE: 01933 652235 EMAIL:
info@trimaxmowers.co.uk 77
www.trimaxmowers.com
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