Public Places
Dr Tim Lodge of Agrostis Sports Surface Consulting argues that, by making sites more attractive to non-sporting people, those very people might, seeing the sport that is taking place nearby, become interested anyway and take it up on a more organised basis, along with the added benefit of perhaps meeting a girl under a tree!
Jumpers for goalposts... I
grew up in Pudsey, a town directly between Leeds and Bradford. During my childhood in the 1970s, Leeds United were - as cited in ‘Zigger Zagger’, a popular schools musical of the time - ‘invincible’. I and all my friends were devoted supporters. In fact, many of us still are, in spite of Leeds temporary forty year decline from those great times. Occasionally, I even went to matches at Elland Road, but I had many other interests, so I would never call myself a fanatic, then as now.
I was fortunate to have quite a big
garden for playing in. This was sufficiently large for us to throw down our pullovers, or stick some of dad’s garden canes into the ground, to make one pair of goalposts and a handful of us could play ‘attack and defence’. There was also a wall to kick balls against which facilitated another football game called ‘spot’.
90 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013
Just a few hundred yards away there was
Queen’s Park, an area surrounded by houses that had three or four football pitches marked out on it. Queen’s Park had some trees around the edges, plus a steep slope at one side that, it seemed, almost everyone in Pudsey came together for sledging when there was sufficient snow on the ground. I seem to remember talking to some real girls during one summer under those trees; that must have been a very educational experience. A footpath crosses the area connecting rather posh Tofts Road to the more working class Waterloo council estate. My friends came from both these areas. During the football season, and if there were enough of us to make it worthwhile, we’d take a football over to Queen’s Park and play to one of the goals. Sometimes they had nets. This was tremendously exciting as we didn’t have to trail off thirty
yards behind to get the ball every time a goal was scored - which was often because, for nine year old boys, full size goals are massive.
I’m so glad that Queen’s Park is still
there and seems to be more or less the same as it was then, though my garden, rather sadly, now supports a set of flats. I hope Queen’s Park has continued to provide memories for the many children that have grown up around it since I did; I’m sure it has.
I could go on and on about my childhood, because it was great, but I’ll spare you all of that and get to the point of this article. Combined with my grown up and professional experiences of sports turf consultancy over the last twenty-odd years, I have realised that public open space is actually crucial to the very fabric of our society. It provides places for organised teams to play sport, of course,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148