Summer Sports - Cricket
he village of Hawk Green lies on the eastern edge of the urbanisation of Greater Manchester, in the Marple region of Stockport in old Cheshire, twelve miles north of Macclesfield and close to the border with Derbyshire. The village cricket club was founded in 1909, joining the High Peak League the same year. They moved from their original ground, adjacent to Marple Golf Club, in the mid-1920s when the golf club purchased the land. Their new ground was the village green itself, opposite The Crown public house. However, with the restrictions of a publicly owned ground, not to mention ‘Grandma’ walking across the ground with her shopping in the middle of a game, and the active encouragement of the League for clubs to improve their facilities, the club purchased their present ground in April 1956. Expenditure on the ground and the pavilion amounted to £2,759.
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Moving into the 21st century, and with a new clubhouse/pavilion, courtesy of a ‘mystery’ fire which all but destroyed the old one, the club plays host to many local organisations including the Residents Association, and Slimmers World, and provides a venue for weddings and other functions.
This is a true ‘volunteer’ run club, with
the current organisation being undertaken by chairman and groundsman, Roy Cartledge, who came to the club in 1990 having previously been at Birch Vale Cricket Club, together with the other officers of the club, underpinned by Management, Social and Junior committees. It was whilst at Birch Vale that his
interest in groundsmanship was kindled. “I became interested in 1974, when the drought that year made our natural square virtually unplayable and, in the process, became a dust bowl,” explains Roy. “The only water available was from a stream in an adjoining field. As captain, I had some responsibility in ‘preparing’ the pitch for the Saturday matches.” “One of our members had heard of a
professional groundsman, P. M. Phillips, who was the head man at Rolls Royce in Crewe, having previously held a similar post at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff. So we sought his advice and the end result was a square dressed with Surrey loam. I think this was the first loam the square had ever seen!”
“My ongoing ‘training’ started at this point and I attended seminars and talked to professional groundsmen, including Pete Marron at Old Trafford, to gain as much knowledge as I could,” continues Roy.
Roy Cartledge and the new Hawk Green clubhouse
All images ©MJ Cartledge/
www.aspphotography.net
At this point in time, Roy was also Chairman of the Derbyshire and Cheshire Cricket League and, with his better understanding of what was required to prepare and maintain a cricket wicket, set about organising seminars and demo days for the local league’s groundsmen, in the process getting all of them to both understand and convert to proper loam wickets.
If all this sounds a little unusual, it should be understood that this was a
small league of just twelve teams looking, basically, to enjoy themselves. However, with Roy’s passion for the game, the league now contains two divisions of twenty teams. Roy’s move to Hawk Green came at the suggestion of a particularly good friend who had been pestering him to join the club. “In my capacity as chairman I often attended meetings and, during one of these, he suggested I moved to Hawk Green as a first team player and groundsman. I looked at my current situation and decided that, with not many playing years left and the apparent apathy within my current club, it would be best for both of us if I moved on, especially with the prospect of a new challenge on, basically, a better ground.” “I told Birch Vale that, at the end of the 1989 season, I would sort out their autumn renovations and then be leaving, and that’s what happened.” “When I arrived at Hawk Green the pitch was poor, although I shouldn’t say that really, should I? There was an elderly chap who had done it for many years. With somewhat limited knowledge, when they first tried to put loam on, they used a wheelbarrow and a shovel and threw it about. So, it was a little bit ‘up and down’ to say the least.” “They were using a basic Mendip loam so, not long after, I upgraded to Boughton Club, and eventually to Boughton County Loam, to give a harder finish to the surface with better pace and bounce. I was being told that loam might affect grass growth but, following my training, I never had too many problems. However, with the autumn, winter and spring weather prior to this season, nothing germinated. As the years rolled by and Roy’s playing days became but a memory, he continued his role as groundsman and also took over the chairmanship of the club. The square originally had thirteen tracks, but this has been increased to fifteen to accommodate a thriving junior section, by very heavy scarifying on one end of the square to make a new pitch and setting out all the existing pitches at nine feet centres.
Now without the help of his friend and assistant since 2005, Roy Anderson, this year will be the first that Roy is not doing the end of season renovations himself. “It’s simply got too much for us at our age,” he says, almost apologetically. “However, I was getting somewhat desperate to get someone to carry out the work, so I contacted a very good friend - Simon Gumbrill of Campey Turf Care - and he very kindly promised to come to my aid. I ‘hinted’ that I had problems with saddles (although not large), and with the fall of the square we always have difficulties with water being concentrated at lower end of the pitches.”
“I thought it was my birthday when he
arrived with a Koro Field Topmaker fitted with the Terraplane blades. This is a newly developed rotor I had seen demonstrated earlier in the year. Peter Marron, former head groundsman at Lancashire CCC, believes all sports grounds should be ‘koroed off ’.” “Once the Koro had done its work, by OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013 PC 77
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