Winter Sports - Football


You can tell when Goodison has grass seed down because there won’t be any pigeons down the road at Anfield, and vice versa


witnessing him chasing them off the pitch. The pigeons, feral cats and magpies are a pain at Goodison, but it is something that an inner city club has to deal with, it seems. “You can tell when Goodison has grass


seed down because there won’t be any pigeons down the road at Anfield, and vice versa,” Ryan tells me, as we stand and watch a pigeon that has escaped Bob’s notice strut around on the pitch.


So, how will they be going about this


weekend, with a Premier League match against Aston Villa on Saturday and an under 21s game against Porto on Sunday? “We’ve known for a while in the calendar that we’ve got these back to back games. So our preparation is done weeks in advance; getting nitrogen levels right and making sure the plant is at its optimum, otherwise it’s going to get stressed out. If you start seeing


”


signs of stress before a game, it’s too late by then.”


All they would do after the Villa game on


Saturday would be to rotary mow to pick everything up, and then make sure it was divot free for the Sunday game. “The vigour and the colour should have, again, been done weeks in advance.” We are stood at one end of the pitch, with a huge 1000W lighting rig beside us. As I


PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2016 I 91


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