Sports & Recreation Clubs
wildlife. Mark takes me through the pitch usage: “Pitch 2 is used sometimes on Mondays and Tuesdays for about three hours. Wednesdays, Thursdays and sometimes Fridays. There are games on it on Saturday, and Sunday is all day with the juniors (U7s- 18s). Pitch 1 is used once or twice a week, which you can cope with if it’s nursed through. It all depends on what the weather is doing.” Although pitch 2 is not as good as pitch 1, it is as good as most in their league. This year, the club has only spent £4,000
Mark and Jake - far too clever for his own good; the dog, that is
on three pitches. Luckily, Mark knows a few contractors, and a mate of his has earthquaked, seeded, fertilised and sprayed them all for the £4,000. “There has been a great amount done, but I’d like to sand dress the pitches that haven’t been done for six or seven years. I would like a tonne of sand to divot the pitches in winter, but the committee won't buy any." The old committee were very set in their
ways and provided quite a barrier for the work that Mark wanted to do on the pitches. “I have to go through the committee for everything. All machinery is my machinery and I get no pay for machine hours.” With regards to dealing with the flooding, he did have a 1.2m verti-drain, “It took me ten hours to do a pitch. But it was here and I could do it as and when I wanted. Or, if I had a bad area, I could just work on that one area. But they got rid. Said I only had sixteen hours a week and that I didn’t have time to do it. I’ve just got my slitters now, that’s all. If you can try and keep the top open and the air in, it's not too bad. That’s why a bit more sand would help. It just levels everything as well, doesn’t it?”
Jake returning from a bird scaring mission “
He’s too clever for his own good is Jake. If he’s bored, he drops his ball or stick on the white line, so I’ve got to throw it
The club did get the pitch levelled for about £30,000 eleven years ago, “It was the best thing we ever did,” Mark tells me. “It’s a lasting legacy. Not being big headed, but it’s one of the best in Yorkshire. We’ve had Yorkshire Cup finals down here. Even at the end of season, when it’s been hammered, they still want to come.” Bancroft Amenities, from Cheshire, with Total Turf Solutions overseeing the project, did a superb job on the pitch. “I worked with them for a week, and they put me on their books. It’s nice, it’s your pitch, and you should have an input in it.”
There was another frustrating point with
The rugby posts have been a bone of contention
52 I PC OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015
this project, with regards to the old committee. TTS were in contact with Twickenham during the levelling, and they offered the Club their spare set of brand new aluminium posts. They would transport them up, and all the club had to do was put them in the ground. But the committee wouldn’t allow it because of tradition: “The other ones, they’re big iron things. They’re going to tip over. When you’re on a flood plain, it gets hard in summer, wet in winter and they’ll end up just going,” Mark says. “As well as this, because we changed the levels so much, the crossbar was at about 13ft, so we had to get an engineer in to chop them off and bring the crossbar down to 11ft 6”. It cost an arm and a leg!”
Mark’s love of rugby extends from playing for the Bradford & Bingley Barbarians to
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156