hours to make the maintenance operations more efficient is under consideration.
The Facilities
The sports surfaces at RHS are split across the three school terms. In the Michaelmas term there are nine rugby pitches, six football pitches and four grass hockey pitches to be looked after. The spring term then sees a seven-a-side pitch for rugby marked out, and four rugby pitches converted to football, taking the total for football pitches to ten. Summer term is predominantly athletics and cricket, with a 400 metre grass athletics track, plus javelin, long jump, high jump and 110 metre hurdles. Additional sports surfaces include a bowling green and a nine hole golf course, part of which incorporates the
main playing field. Unfortunately for the school’s golfers, this means that, for health and safety reasons, some of the golf holes have limited use if any other sports are being played on the field. For cricket, there are four grass squares with eight, seven, four and thirteen strips respectively, with no overlapping outfields, such is the size of the site, plus two single artificial wickets. Three of the squares are for school cricket; the main square, with thirteen strips, was professionally constructed for 1st team and representative matches.
In October 2003, nine of the thirteen strips were dug out to a depth of six inches (150mm) and infilled with GOSTD from Surrey Loams Ltd, under the supervision of Total Turf Solutions (TTS). The remaining strips and the other three squares are managed with
Ongar loam. All major renovations on the cricket
squares are carried out at the end of the playing season in accordance with ECB guidelines, using GOSTD and Ongar loam where appropriate. Only quality dwarf perennial rye grass is used on the squares, and in the football goalmouths. The squares are rolled with a Benford double drum vibrating roller, without the vibrating function engaged, so that it is just a dead weight that rolls across the surface. The height of cut on the squares for match play is 3mm, and the school has invested in a cylinder grinder to maintain the quality of cut, which Tim says has helped tremendously. Indeed, Tim’s favourite piece of equipment is the Dennis 510 twenty inch cylinder mower that he uses for the fine mowing of the cricket squares.
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