Winter Sports
Stoke City’s Andy Jackson in discussion with Ben ...
trying to introduce similar products into my programme at Ipswich, although it is being limited to the stadium pitch at the moment. With the extra costs of having to pay a contractor to make the applications, it is not feasible to apply at the training ground until we have access to our own sprayer. This will be loaned to us by Ransomes, whose factory is just three miles away, on a reciprocal deal. Next, it was on to the Britannia Stadium to meet Andy Jackson. Promotion four years ago sees Stoke City in a different financial position to Ipswich, although Andy’s budgets and staff levels aren’t dissimilar. Developments that interested me were that the first team training pitches all
... whilst the first team pitch gets a cut
had primary drainage installed, whilst a Desso artificial, all weather pitch eased the usage of the grass pitches in the evenings and in poorer weather. Although there is a dome with a 60x40m 3G pitch at Ipswich, most of the youth training (five nights a week) takes place on natural turf under floodlights. I am going to recommend having primary drainage installed at our training centre. This year, we have seen extremely high rainfall recorded, coupled with an additional six hundred hours of training due to the revised EPPP category two status. I need to ensure that the rain is being dealt with efficiently, so that training isn’t taking place in wet conditions, leading to
damage to the surface and long term damage to soil structures, which lead to more problems in the future. It was nice to see that the Britannia Stadium had open corners, with good air movement throughout. Many stadiums are now being filled in at the corners with the pressure to put more seats in to increase revenue. Portman Road’s north stand - the Sir Bobby Robson Stand - has vents that can be opened to increase air flow in to the stadium.
Although we have a couple of homemade lighting rigs for the goalmouths, I believe it is essential for us to invest in larger rigs, as I saw at Stoke, to aid recovery from games and keep the turf as healthy as possible during the
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013 PC 55
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