Educational Establishments
The ability to excel on the pitch is shaped by the abundance and quality of sports facilities on offer at Durham, which manages natural and artificial surfaces, allowing the university to cater for all abilities, from a myriad of inter- college fixtures to elite level. Chief amongst its provision are two 3G synthetic pitches, two full-size synthetic hockey pitches (water and sand-based), eight natural turf rugby pitches, innumerable football areas and four cricket squares (one all-weather) - not a bad performance for a university with a 15,000 student body - one dwarfed by the likes of Manchester and Birmingham.
“Over fifty sports are played here; not all have an elite link,” explains Peter. “We pride ourselves on our ability to offer students a huge range of sporting opportunities, with the more popular ones, like rugby, cricket and football, fielding sides running into double- figures.”
Most of the university attenders participate in sport. Because of the intercollegiate league system, the demand for high quality playing surfaces is extremely high, with some 66 football teams, 35 rugby, 48 netball and 36 hockey - among others - amounting to some 6,000+ students taking part in the various leagues every week. Servicing such a welter of fixtures will inevitably take its toll on the quality of provision if not managed correctly so, alongside the evolution of sport at Durham, the skills set and demands on groundstaff has also grown dramatically. I interviewed Deputy Head
Groundsman, Steve Brown, in the absence of head Paul Derrick, who was away from the university. However, Steve knows as much as anyone on site as he is the team’s longest standing members, joining aged just sixteen in 1974. Steve is accustomed to the dramatic changes in Durham’s sporting provision - the sheer volume of fixtures is one of the
most notable. “There’s only five of us, so it can be a tall order at times, especially when we have the unpredictable climate to contend with,” Steve explains. Durham’s northerly location means
staff are often at odds with, what can be, severe weather conditions. If our last two winters are any barometer, the pattern of heavy rain and snowfalls and continued sub-zero winter temperatures are here to stay. For groundstaff, such extremes can often put pay to the notion of yearly planning, as delays in fixtures mean delays in renovation works. “The football and rugby seasons officially end in March, but we’re forced to keep a few pitches back if they [the university] are playing catch up with fixtures lost over the winter,” says Steve. “We like to start seeding in March if we can, but much depends on rainfall as only one of our natural pitches has the facility for irrigation; and that one is reserved mainly for use by Hartlepool United FC. For all others, we’re forced to
“We’re the second highest ranked university for sport in the UK, behind Loughborough
only. We haven’t finished outside the top ten in the last decade, which is testament to what we’ve tried to build here”
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