Industry
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The results were quite shocking. Not a single pitch achieved a mark of ‘good’, a handful were deemed as ‘standard’, but the majority were marked down as ‘poor’. I doubt that any Local Authority pitches in England would differ very much from my findings either
an Xbox/iPad or venturing out to try and play football on a mud bath of a surface. For those who do play, even at the start of the season, they find that surfaces are poor and deteriorate further as the season progresses, whilst fixtures are often cancelled week after week through the most inclement months. The argument for artificial installations
everywhere sounds solid enough; all weather, all year round play, offering round the clock multi-use opportunities, providing football for all. It is certainly true that an artificial surface allows for far more hours of football to be played per week in comparison to a single natural grass pitch. But, and isn’t there always a but, even with 600 artificial pitches, how many of the enthusiasts over the whole country would actually be able to get a game in on the weekends, which is when most amateurs play football? The obvious answer lies in our natural park
pitches, all 8,000 of them. But, and here’s another of those buts, local authorities have endured round after round of spending cuts forced on to them by Government cut-backs; park pitches being one of the areas that
investment has been reduced to nothing more than cutting the grass and marking out. Long gone are the days when a council
workforce would not only cut the pitches every week during the growing season, but aerate them on a monthly basis, drag a flat harrow across to put back any divots and retain good levels, let alone fertilise and weed kill to make sure that the surfaces were in good order for play. End of season renovations are non-existent on most park pitches, and even ‘County’ pitches have no more than a goalmouth ‘top-up’ of soil and seed as a token gesture. In my opinion, this is where money should be spent - improving the game for the many, not just for the few who live and play near one of the artificial pitches that will be created.
This summer, I undertook a review, on behalf of a council, of all their park pitches - 93 in total. This was for their entry within the Sport England Framework. I followed the FA’s guidelines for a non-technical visual survey of all ninety-three pitches in the borough. The results were quite shocking. Not a single
64 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015
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