Educational Establishments
“
The mowing of the pitches is ongoing and certainly keeps us busy along with all the other works that go on; for example, it takes a good day to mark out all the sports pitches
In total, the natural grass areas provide enough room for seven football pitches, five rugby pitches, two lacrosse pitches and three cricket squares. These are complemented with a full size artificial pitch, artificial cricket practice net areas and tarmac tennis courts. Phil has two full time members of staff; Elliot Coomansingh (3 years) is his Assistant Groundsman and Geoff Morris (14 years) is the Head Gardener. Geoff spends the majority of his time looking after all the formal gardens, shrub beds, herbaceous areas, lawns, allotments and borders but will, when required, help out if additional work is required on the sports fields. Phil and Elliot undertake the work on the
sports fields, servicing the needs of the sports master and producing pitches for training and matches. Mowing is undertaken with either a triple
mower, a set of five trailed gang mowers or a Kubota rotary deck mower. Most of the grass and pitch areas are cut using the trailed gang
Most of the grass cutting is undertaken with the trailed gangs behind a trusty old Massey Ferguson tractor
mowers pulled behind their trusty old Massey Ferguson 362 tractor. These areas are cut twice a week at
around 40mm, thereby ensuring they can cut more quickly and reduce the amount of grass clippings left on the ground. “The mowing of the pitches is ongoing,” commented Phil, “and certainly keeps us busy along with all the other works that go on; for example, it takes a good day to mark out all the sports pitches.”
When time allows, Phil does like to use the Ransomes 36” Mastiff to help present the football pitches, but preferring to produce a good surface for the pupils to develop their skills and play decent football. Phil is also a qualified FA football coach and helps out with coaching of the school teams. The summer term is a very busy time, with
cricket, athletics, golf and other summertime activities to cater for; Phil will often work long hours, either coming in early or staying over to complete jobs. This is made easy by the fact that he lives on site.
With cricket preparations, Phil is governed by the weather and, without raised cricket covers, his work can be affected by what he can achieve and whether matches can be played or not. The team has two fine turf mowers; a
Protea 630 and Lloyds Paladin, which are used to prep cricket squares and pitches and cut the golf greens. Phil explained: “The cricket pitches are
made up of two main squares, seven wickets on the senior square and the same on the Under 11 square. In addition, the school has five grass nets and four artificial strips plus two extra Under 10/11 wickets on Wykey Field.” “Similar to the birth of the golf greens, the main squares were not constructed to the normal methods, i.e. excavation, base and a consolidated 100mm of cricket loam etc. To my amazement, the renovations of years gone by were carried out with dressings of sugar beet washings; predominantly sand/silt! Obviously, the standard of wickets,
To my amazement, the renovations of years gone by were carried out with dressings of sugar beet washings; predominantly sand/silt! Obviously, the standard of wickets, based on these previous dressings, was not good, and would not improve
The recently installed artificial surface 88 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015 ”
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