Summer Sports - Cricket
After dedicating thirty years of his life to the home of Lancashire
cricket, Pete Marron left Old Trafford three years ago for pastures new.
Our editor caught up with him recently to discuss the reasons for his departure and find out what he is up to now
Broadheath. Every weekend he must have 150 kids playing football on park pitches - they are basically dog tracks! If he had a decent place to go, how many more kids could he keep of the streets?” Pete, in his soft Lancashire accent, is having a bit of rant about the state of public parks, coupled with the high class facilities at private schools that could be better utilised. “This bloke has to go and beg and
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borrow to get money, yet private schools, where money is no object, provide high spec pitches that could be used by these kids. We have a few lads who come and play on my pitches for a kick-about. The members told me to kick them off, but they are not bad lads, and I told them that, as long as they didn’t do any damage, they were welcome to use them. They’ve been good as gold.” “My general view is, give clubs and schools the money to put their pitches right and let the general public use them. I listened to FA Chairman, David Bernstein, going on about lack of facilities and I thought, you’re doing it all wrong. Councils will not spend money on pitches. They’ve got no money. Get the kids playing on decent surfaces, get them off the streets, tackle obesity and antisocial behaviour. Start building from the bottom. Put a politician in front of me and I’ll tell him where he’s going wrong!” “When I was growing up, all the kids used to know the two council groundsmen that looked after our local pitch. They were part of our community. Now, you’ll get some bloke turn up, occasionally, with a set of gang mowers to top the grass and burn in lines, and that’s it. There’s no sense of community.” “And there’s no interest in cricket. It’s too time consuming and expensive to prepare correctly. And there’s bikes, horses and dogs running all over the place. That’s why I allow the local schools to use the wickets here [more of ‘here’ later]. They won’t play on much better wickets outside Old Trafford. What a start for them; that’s how to bring on
40 PC APRIL/MAY 2012
ete Marron is off on one before we even sit down for our ‘formal’ interview. “There’s a guy I know down the road who runs this junior football side called
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the cricketers of the future. It seems common sense to me” As you might have gathered, Pete
Marron has some strong views and, coupled with his passion for grass, would make an ideal candidate to help improve the state of the UK’s pitches. I suggest that he, and some other recent high profile ‘retirees’, could be utilised by the ECB and other governing bodies to act as consultants. “I doubt that the ECB would want me, or Frosty [Phil Frost, ex Taunton Head Groundsman], because we are too, how shall I say, forthright in our opinions, but I could see Bill Gordon doing it, and maybe Steve Rouse, although I think he’s done with cricket.” After ten minutes, and having made his point succinctly, Pete is ready to talk about life after Old Trafford. He is now the groundsman at The Bowdon Club, which caters for cricket, hockey and squash, and now football, as I am soon to discover. The facilities include two synthetic pitches, four squash courts and the cricket oval. In addition, he looks after Altrincham Grammar School for Boys and Bowdon Grammar School for Boys.
“I look after more acreage on my own now than I did at Old Trafford with three staff,” he muses. “Some people would say this is a step backwards, but I thoroughly enjoy being hands-on again. At Old Trafford I was just a manager. I’ve learned to mark out an athletics track, which I never knew, as well as preparing rugby and football pitches; there’s a lot more going on.”
“Management has gone out of me. I
don’t want to look after people anymore, or talk about budgets but, if you give me a ground and say, ‘bring this back up to standard’, I’d jump at the chance. That’s what I’m doing now. I’d work for anyone, I just don’t want to be a manager again. I’m past that.”
I ask whether the ECB directives put too much constraints on groundsmen? “Let’s face it,” says Pete. “We are a nation of reporters. We’ll prepare a report on anything, given the chance. Where cricket is concerned, I think the ‘goalposts’ have been moved too many times over the years. In the end, I just kept my head down and did what I thought was best. I was usually right. Of
course, I made mistakes, we all do, but that’s how we learn; as long as we don’t make the same mistake twice.” Pete remembers how, when he took over at Old Trafford, the pitches were marked by the captains. “That was complete nonsense,” he suggests, “because, if the captain had a bad day, his marking would reflect his mood. Now, they are marked by the umpires.
life after Old Trafford?
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