Winter Sports
Light bulb moment O
The principles of maintaining a modern football pitch have not changed much but, nowadays, it is more about the intensity of the inputs, and the wider range of resources, equipment and machinery available.
Laurence Gale MSc meets award winning Aston Villa Head Groundsman, Jonathan Calderwood, to shed some ‘light’ on modern day pitch maintenance
ne of the major advances has been the pitch construction. Most are now utilising either Desso, Fibrelastic or Fibresand, with undersoil heating and automated pop-up watering systems as the norm. The major benefit of having reinforced pitches is to allow better drainage capacity. However, there is a price to pay for having such a free draining, inert profile, as nutrients leach very quickly, so a robust feeding programme is required to keep the plant healthy. They also have to be watered more readily to keep them stable. I met up with Jonathan Calderwood, the Head Groundsman at Villa Park, one of a number of Premiership groundsmen who are leading the way in pitch management to ensure the best possible playing surfaces are provided for their players, both at the stadium and training grounds.
Jonathan began his career in
groundsmanship back home in Ireland, with a week’s work experience at
Glentoran Football Club, a team he had supported in his youth.
“I always wanted to work in football,” says the 31-year-old. “After my stint at Glentoran, the club lost its head groundsman, so they asked me to step in.” Gaining his NVQ in horticulture from
Greenmount Agricultural College, Antrim, he moved to Myerscough College, Preston, to study for an HND in turf science and sportsground management. “During my time at Myerscough, I had the chance of a work placement at Wembley Stadium, and that was something I simply could not turn down.” This led to Jonathan becoming assistant head groundsman during his three year stint at the famous old stadium. He worked at Wembley until it was demolished in 2001, and has many happy memories of the stadium. One of the highlights was that, along with other staff members, he played the very last game of football on the hallowed turf before it was ripped up and sold for charity. He even
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