Winter Sports - Football
Our editor heads to the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground to catch up with the groundstaff at Wolverhampton Wanderers as they get stuck in to end of season renovations. All were in buoyant mood following the club’s promotion back to the Championship as Paul Matthew, Deputy Head Groundsman explains
two seasons saw the string snap spectacularly as consecutive relegations found them playing in Football League Division One for the 2013-14 season. Die-hard fans may well point to a
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succession of indifferent choices of manager leading to their demise, but they are in no doubt that the appointment of Welshman Kenny Jackett, in May of last year, was not one of them. His inspirational management style and reliance on youth saw ‘The Wolves’ gain promotion back to the Championship at the first attempt as Football League One champions, losing only five games all season and amassing a three figure points tally into the bargain. Head Groundsman, Wayne Lumbard,
confesses that it has been a tremendous season for the club. He admits that the past two seasons have been “difficult” but, with
olverhampton Wanderers have, like a number of their Midlands rivals, yoyo’ed up and down the leagues in recent times, but the last
promotion achieved in record breaking fashion, the club are going in the right direction and the aim is to get back into the Barclays Premier League as soon as possible. Kenny Jackett is in no doubt that he has the squad to do that next season and says that the quality of the surfaces at both the Molineux stadium and the training ground have played a big part in their success. “The groundstaff are first class, absolutely first class,” he comments. “The surface on the first team training pitches and at Molineux can’t be bettered anywhere else in the country. That is testament to a lot of hard work that goes on here and I really appreciate it. To have a great surface to play on when we play our games, and also day in day out when we do our training, is fantastic.”
“We all know that, if we work together, we get what we want, which is a good playing surface to train on,” continues Kenny. “It is vital to us in trying to produce a good team, and we have had that this year. It has been fantastic to work with and a big part of our success.”
Such glowing praise may be rare from a
football manager and Wayne has no intention of resting on his laurels. “May is a very busy time for us all,” he confesses. “Not only are we dealing with the final games of the season, including corporate hospitality matches, we are also busy arranging our end of season renovations.” My visit coincided with some of the
scheduled renovation work being undertaken at the training ground. All the pitches will receive some sort of renovation work to varying degrees during May, the first stage being the academy pitch and rehabilitation areas. Wayne was keen to get these done first so that the players, on their return from
their summer break, would have a decent surface to train on. The next pitch to be done will be the first team pitch, built to the same Fibrelastic specification as the stadium pitch. Once the season has finished, the stadium pitch will be renovated. Wayne’s deputy, Paul Matthew, was on
hand to explain the work being undertaken. “We started the renovations early for the first time in a long time. The first pitch was fraise mown, taking off between 10-13mm of foliage. Then we took a slight bit of rootzone off, leaving the rye grass crowns in for regeneration. This is the pitch the players come back to train on, hence the reason it has only been fraise mown so we have instant stability.” “We have a rehab area over the other side
and that’s also been fraise mown to expose the top drain sand slits that we put in last year. This will keep them nice and clean and free draining. Both areas were then topdressed and verti-drained to relieve the compaction that had built up over the season. After that, we put a concoction of fertilisers on with a pre-seeder. We went with a new pre-seeder this year, with a slightly higher phosphorus content. The aim is to build a big root mass up to the existing one that is in there.” “We will then go with our normal base
feed, just to keep us ticking over until the new seed comes through. After that, we will go four ways with the disc seeder. Then, the fifth pass will be with the dimple seeder, just to fill in the disc seeder, so we are not left with cubing. The dimple seeder fills in the cubes lovely. We should get a very good take and, from there on in, we should have a very good surface instantly for the first team to come back in and train on.” “After that, the next two pitches at the
Wayne Lumbard, Kenny Jackett and Paul Matthew 56 I PC JUNE/JULY 2014
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