Winter Sports - Football
Leicester City’s return to the Barclays Premier League, after an absence of ten years, will have certainly pleased all those connected with the club, not least the city's ‘favourite son’, Gary Winston Lineker OBE. It has been a journey masterminded by their amiable manager, Nigel Pearson, culminating in a record thirty-o
one league
victories, a points tally of 102 and, not surprisingly, the Championship winners trophy
Foxes on a run...
50 I PC JUNE/JULY 2014
who began his career at Coventry City’s Highfield Road Stadium under Head Groundsman Michael Finch, before moving to Aston Villa as assistant to Jon Calderwood. “I am indebted to them both,” confirms John, “for instilling in me a work ethic and skills sets that will stand me in good stead for the rest of my career.” Following his spell at Villa, John returned
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to Coventry City to work as Head Groundsman at their new Ricoh Arena stadium, a position he held until his move to Leicester City earlier this year following the departure of their long serving head groundsman, Ed Mowe, who had moved on to the FA’s St George's Park complex. Returning to the Premier League offers
many rewards, especially on the financial front. The club will receive additional monies, some of which has been earmarked for improvements to the pitches at the training ground.
Taking on any new role can be daunting,
especially half way through a season and with the club flying high in the league. “The first thing was not to come in and try and change the world,” confesses John. “I needed to stand back, assess the staff, observe and see what their routines were and monitor how the pitches were performing in terms of recovery, infiltration and performance.” “My assistant is Simon Gibson, who has
been at the club fifteen years. We have three more groundsmen, Andy Oakes, Paul Billington and Callum Allsop, with Dave Lay looking after all the gardens. We are also
romotion to the Barclays Premier League for Leicester City Football Club also marks the return to the top flight for their Head Groundsman, John Ledwidge,
considering appointing two new apprentices in the summer.” “It was certainly a baptism of fire,” John
continues. “In the first three weeks of taking up my new role in January, the weather conditions were ‘quite challenging’. Not only was I trying to gauge how the pitches were performing, I needed to find time to attend meetings, meet up with new colleagues and, on top of that, prepare the annual grounds maintenance budgets for the next season, budgeting for either the promise of the Premier League or the reality of Championship football.” “One of the first things I did was to arrange
for some soil tests to be taken on all of the pitches to ascertain properties, nutrient status and infiltration rates. Apart from the King Power stadium pitch, which is Desso, the rest of the pitches, at the training ground, were sand ameliorated, sitting on top of a clay base that, historically, haven’t drained well. I also dug some trial pits to ascertain porosity rates which didn’t make happy vewing.” “With the club heading back to the
Premier League there is an opportunity to invest additional money into these pitches. After some research, and knowing that many clubs had gone down the route of installing similar specified pitches to their stadium pitch, it seemed a logical step for us to go down the same route. Putting together a detailed proposal to take the board of directors within my first four weeks was a daunting task to say the least, but using my experience and knowledge I had gained I managed to persuade the eight directors and the chairman to invest in a new Desso pitch to be built at the training ground, incorporating undersoil heating and drainage
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