Winter Sports
Looking towards the main stand
SATURDAY 11th May 1985 was a tragic day in Bradford City’s history when fire broke out in the main stand, an old wooden construction, killing 56 and injuring at least 265. The flames quickly took hold and eye witnesses likened it to a fireball.
The game, against Swindon Town, was the final match of the 1984-85 season, and was due to be a celebratory affair in which the team were to be presented with the Division Three championship trophy. Dignitaries from the city’s twin towns, plus Bradford officials were in attendance, and they all watched in horror as the fire destroyed the main stand in just nine minutes. At Valley Parade there are now two memorials. One is a sculpture by Patricia McAllister and donated by Sylvia Graucob, a former resident of West Yorkshire, which has now been now re-situated at that end of the stand where the fire began. The other, situated by the main entrance, was donated by the club after its £7,500,000 renovation of the original main stand in 2002. It has a black marble fascia on which the names and ages of those that died are inscribed in gold, and a black marble platform on which people can leave flowers and mementos. The tragic events began the introduction of many sweeping changes to health and safety regulations at football stadiums across the UK, with the Hillsborough disaster a few years later instigating further measures. Immediately after the fire, Valley Parade went through a series of redevelopments, with the club spending £2.6 million building a new main stand and improving the Kop. The new ground reopened on 14th December 1986 with an exhibition match against an England International XI. Further improvements over the years have taken the capacity up to 25,136. Rest in Peace.
With some reasoned arguments, Mick managed to convince the club to invest in Fibresand to help stabilise the pitch. Such were the club’s finances at the time, work to the centre of the pitch only was undertaken and, although this worked very well, the following season it was the wing areas that were suffering from lack of grass cover!
It also made the pitch difficult to manage in terms of not having a consistent profile. Watering requirements were especially difficult, with the centre of the pitch requiring more water than the wings. The club installed a pop up
irrigation system on the perimeter of the pitch, but Mick still has to drag hoses and oscillating sprinklers onto the centre of the pitch which, he says, is not very practical for getting water on prior to games and at half time. At some point he hopes the club will invest in more pop ups, but knows it is not worth doing anything until a decision has been made about any reconstruction of the pitch. Working alone means that Mick can often be found at the ground at 6.30am, so that he can complete the day’s tasks. On match days, he may start even earlier.
He generally mows the pitch every other day, but always on match days. During the summer months, he likes to try out new mowing patterns as it helps prevent a nap forming. It takes four hours to complete. Height of cut is kept at 25mm during the summer, reverting back to 28-30mm during the playing season. A new Ransomes Mastiff nine bladed cylinder mower, supplied by Golf & Turf based in Wakefield, is supplemented by a rather old, but tried and trusted Dennis cassette mower for brushing and verticutting. Linemarking is carried out using a transfer wheel marker when there is plenty of grass cover but, during the winter, Mick reverts to a spray jet marker. Post match pitch repairs revolve
around divoting, brushing to clean up 82 PC JUNE/JULY 2013
surface debris and then mowing to encourage the grass to tiller. This year, Mick has managed to persuade the club to invest in a new Iseki TH4335 compact tractor, a Sisis Aer-aid Javelin aerator and Sisis Twinplay units which, in the short time he’s been using them, “has made a hell of difference to the pitch”. As for his feeding regime, the club have agreed to invest in this too. In the past, Mick says, it was a case of chucking on some cheap high N granular which, over time, led to some problems with black layer. Mick has now had the pitch analysed and been provided with a more specific organic fertiliser programme so, along with the ability to aerate on a regular basis, he is expecting to see the pitch improve further.
At the time of my visit - the day
before the play-off final in mid May - Mick was also considering doing all of this year’s end of season renovations himself, hiring in a seeder, scarifier and topdresser to complete the work. This will include mowing the pitch to about 3mm, scarifying in three directions, aerating, topdressing with sixty tonnes of Rufford sand and seeding with ‘several’ bags of Johnsons Premier Pitch, saving some for oversowing later in the year. Getting machinery into the ground can be difficult due to the lack of available access space - there is only one access point via a very narrow road that is restricted further by a floodlight pylon. Mick says that it requires a bit of planning and also getting permission from the council to partially obstruct the road during deliveries. It certainly makes life interesting. The club are palnning to use the nearby Woodhouse Grove School grounds as a training base, which will give them the opportunity to train on their new 4G artificial pitch as well as their natural pitches. The school’s head groundsman, Simon Wood, is very keen to work with the club as he sees the benefits of sharing resources.
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