A fan-tastic groundsman
Simon Rudkins: director, groundsman and commercial partner
Neville Johnson visits the south coast to see a non-league pitch and its award winning
groundsman who’s given a new meaning to whole hearted support
T 80
he Battle of Hastings is etched on every Englishmans’ mind: 1066 and all that. It actually took place over six miles from the south coast resort, but there is a battle every year these days in the town itself - to keep its football club afloat. Hastings United just managed to hang on to its Ryman Premiership status last season. A single point kept it from relegation. This is the bedrock of the game, life on the edge. If you are a fan of Hastings United, you mean it. You are a true fan. There’s no glamour, no Europe beckoning, just a patient bedside vigil with maybe a back of the mind dream that your club might just ‘do a Wimbledon’ and end up beating Liverpool in a Wembley final.
One such fan is Simon Rudkins. He’s Hastings United through and through, always has been, since moving to the town over ten years ago. No boyhood climbing on a Manchester United or Chelsea bandwagon for him. His loyalty and practical involvement is like few others in football, and this has led to a rare double-act on and off the pitch. At the age of twenty-eight Simon made
a career changing decision. Tired of office work, and yearning for the outdoor life, he embarked on a BTech National Certificate course in amenity horticulture at Plumpton College near Brighton. Ten years later, as well as running his own successful landscaping business, he is a director of the football club he loves, and now its award-winning
groundsman to boot. You don’t get much more outdoors than that. The Hastings United ground is called
the Pilot Field. Along one side it is a natural amphitheatre and it has one very distinctive feature, the pitch area being surrounded by the remnants of a cinder speedway track, which ceased operation over forty years ago. When I was invited to visit and meet Simon earlier this summer, I had this notion that it had been named after a local World War 1 fighter ace or a pioneering aeronaut who had landed there after an epic flight. Sadly no: it was so-called simply because what was once a farm close by grew a type of oat called pilate, which was used as animal fodder. Hence, the loose derivation of the word pilot, so it is very
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