Winter Sports - Football
Bullet Calcium. In this week, we also welcomed our new member to the team, Sam Ridgway, joining us from his previous groundsman’s position at Ellesmere College. Sam had been helping us on match days for at least a season and is a staunch Shrewsbury fan, so it made sense to give my legs a little rest and get some new blood in to work alongside Richard and I. On Thursday 15th, Sam got his
Pitch on 10th October
first real taste of being the ‘newbie’ and spent the statutory eight hours on the verti-drain. Richard and I used the Hondas again to hoover the dross that fell off the verti-drain behind Sam. We left the pitch alone then
Lighting rig frame - galvanised steel and golf buggy wheels
until Monday 19th, when we applied 15 litres of Maxwell chelated iron and 40kgs of Sol control 12:0:39+mg, after first mowing with the cylinders and taking three boxes of clippings off. We cut the pitch again on the morning of the 20th, marked out and got ready for the league match against Doncaster Rovers that evening. Playing a team that had lost seven games on the trot, we thought this would be another home win but, under the new management of Darren Ferguson, Doncaster had other ideas and spoilt the party. Pitch repairs began after the game and continued the next day; then we left it alone. On Friday 23rd, we verti-
drained the pitch on a wider and quicker pattern and ran the Honda pros over it, before a final cut with the cylinders. We played Bury the next day,
‘Verti-draining’ on 15th October
having done final preparations and a mark out in the morning. Whilst I shouldn’t mention it (because few actually noticed), the corner sprinkler came on with about ten minutes of the game left - the timer had been left on by accident! Doubly fortunate for us, the game was stopped for an injured player at the other end of the park and Richard had the remote in his pocket and turned it off within about six seconds! Still it did make us add “check the irrigation programme before games in future” to the list of match day duties. After the scar repairs, we verti-
drained the pitch again on the Monday and used the Hondas to clear up the debris and get the grass standing up. On Tuesday 27th, we cut the
A little fusarium 62 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016
pitch one way with the cylinders and got ready for an FA Youth Cup match. The weather was horrendous and it rained from
about 3.00pm right through to final whistle. At times, it was torrential, coming down through the glow of the floodlights in curtains, but the pitch stood up well and, to be honest, probably played the best it had for two months.
We did minimal repairs on the
Wednesday and again got the verti-drain out to open up even more holes through the pitch. It would be fair to say that the root length and mass was very good and we didn’t have any worries at this stage about destabilising the surface. Keeping water moving through quickly and oxygen in the profile was our main objective, and the regular aeration/spiking seemed to be achieving this well for us. Friday 30th; we took the verti-
drain onto the training pitch and gave that a deep spike to help keep the surface drier, although being entirely clay based we didn't think that it would be in use for much longer. We fertilised the main pitch with eight bags of 3:3:12 Maxwell Premier fertiliser on Monday 2nd November. On the Tuesday, we started to notice a little fusarium on the poa dominated surrounds, and, after mowing the pitch on the Wednesday, could see that this was transferring across onto the pitch, so we sprayed with Chipco Green on the Thursday. Temperatures remained mild and the constant wet weather seemed to make it breeding heaven for disease pathogens. On Saturday the 7th, the manager asked if they could train on the pitch, which we agreed to. They were due to play away against Gainsborough Trinity the next day in the FA Cup, and didn't have anywhere to train on the Saturday. From 10th-13th, we
experienced Hurricane Abigail, more and more rain. I remember when I used to go into work and feel that half inch or 10mm of rain seemed like a lot but, over the last few weeks, I’d be going into work and saying to Richard, “we had over an inch of rain again through yesterday and last night”. It wasn’t every day, but the west side of the UK was really copping the worst of these former hurricanes coming across the Atlantic. On Saturday 14th, we were supposed to be playing Walsall at home, but they had managed to gain a postponement due to having three players called up for international duty. The assistant
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