Winter Sports - Football
I
finished my first article just before the club played Blackpool on Saturday 26th September, a game that Shrewsbury Town won to finally break their poor home form. The pitch continued to play
well during the game and we spent an hour afterwards nursing any grass back up from tears and scars left by boot studs and blades. On the Monday, we carried on with a morning of divot repairs, then brushed the pitch with the Dennis cassettes and followed with a rotary cut to clean up. Tuesday 29th; we set out and applied 8 x 20kgs bags of Lebanon Country Club MD 12:0:24+56% slow release nitrogen as a base feed to keep up the nutrients available in the
profile for the plant. On Thursday 1st October, we verti-drained with the Baroness spiker using a new set of tines to full depth on a tight pattern. It’s an eight hour job, and sitting on an open tractor can get pretty demoralising and cold; the upshot is that you know what the benefits it brings to the health of the rootzone and the grass.
On Monday 5th October, we cut the pitch using the Dennis G860 and took off seven boxes of grass clippings, which was still encouraging for the time of year. The next day, we applied 5 litres of Bullet Phosphite and 10 litres of Bullet chelated iron to the pitch.
We were now leaving the pitch alone when we didn’t have reason to be on there and didn’t resume work again until the Friday when we cut both ways and marked out ready for the next day’s game. Saturday 10th; a later start as mostly
prepared in advance. Monitored watering in the morning and through lunch, whilst we put the goals and safety nets up. The team played Colchester in the league and the pitch stood up well, as did the players, as they recorded a second home win on the bounce! We carried out post-match repairs after the game and then again on the Monday morning, before ‘hoovering’ with the Honda rotaries. The next day we applied 10L of
PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016 I 61
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