Winter Sports
heffield is a city bursting with football tradition. Not only does it contain two successful league clubs in Wednesday and United, it can boast the world’s oldest club still playing association football; Sheffield FC, founded in 1857. The city also stakes a claim to the world’s oldest football ground, Sandygate Road, the home of Hallam FC, a club which, alongside Sheffield FC, survives out of fifteen teams playing in Sheffield during the mid-19th century to still compete to this day. Sheffield FC’s ladies team, ranked 25th in the country, compete in the Premier League Northern Division, whilst the men’s first team plays in the Northern Premier League Division South, seven divisions below the Premier League. Only two football clubs in the world have been awarded the FIFA Order of
68 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013
The oldest club in the world! S
Merit, given for their role in football history. One is Real Madrid and the other is Sheffield FC. Although, at present, some distance
from Real Madrid stature-wise, its own rich history is very important to Sheffield FC and it enthuses about continuing the legacy left by football glories of past and, more recently, the Olympics. Integral to the success of any club, of course, is the quality of the pitch. Tradition is not the only link Sheffield FC and Hallam FC share as, even though the pitches are several miles apart, they are both maintained by the same man. Peter Bowden runs his contracting company, which at his last count maintained eighty-two pitches per week around the Sheffield area. Four full-time staff help him look after the various grounds that include schools, football and rugby clubs.
He explained the situation at Sheffield
FC: “We are really a sports maintenance contract company, and Sheffield FC is something different really. You get involved with the club, and then you get involved with other parts of it as well. It’s that sort of place. We have a basic minimum contract and then everything else is out of goodwill. I’m on the committee there as well. There are quite a lot of people involved with the club, right down to volunteers that come in to serve food on match days.” Peter said his budget for renovations was £2,500 per year. “For that we reseed the pitch, level any uneven parts out and put more drainage in each year because we have a programme where we gradually add drainage. It’s ongoing, as we can’t afford to do it all in one go, and we will never be able to get it perfect because water comes in off the fields
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