News
A Pitchcare insight into the Campey Grassroots Tour
James Grundy, one of the presenters at the recent renovation tour for grassroots winter sports groundsmen, gives us his assessment
It was a pleasure to join up with the Campey Turf Care Renovation Tour over the past few weeks, meeting a whole range of turfcare professionals and volunteers alike. From Fawley on England’s south coast to Stirling in Scotland and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, the tour truly covered the British Isles.
For me, the opportunity to engage with close to 1,000 people passionate about turfcare, and the facilities they produce for the community at large, was a motivating experience. Everyone involved with hosting the events - from the primary organisers, Campey Turf Care, to those from the other sponsors; ICL, Dennis Sisis, Limagrain and New Holland - were a joy to be involved with.
Hopefully, the Pitchcare presentation I or one of my colleagues made at each of the locations was well received and gave everyone an insight into the values and strategies which underpin the founding philosophy of the company and how this ethos enables us to assist end users, at all levels of the industry, in a whole host of ways on a daily basis.
We should never forget that, as a horticultural discipline, the sportsturf industry sits within the service leisure industry; to provide facilities and surfaces for play, accessible to the community.
The initial preparation involved koro-ing with the Koro Field Top Maker. This removed the entire organic matter layer down to a precise depth of 30mm using the impressive Terraplane® rotor, with
the side arm elevator channelling the debris directly into a trailer for removal, leaving a totally clean finish.
This was then followed by an Imants Rotosweep with a scarifier to remove any remaining debris. Aeration was tackled with an Imants ShockWave and a Koro Recycling Dresser to totally decompact the playing surface.
Sand was spread with the Dakota Turf Tender and Raycam Speedresser which was then levelled with the Koro Speedharrows ready for reseeding using a Vredo Compact Overseeder.
By showing all of the available techniques and equipment, groundsmen were given the opportunity to identify which areas of turf maintenance and/or renovation were appropriate to their own facilities.
Each visitor had a unique opportunity to learn how easy it was to switch to a more effective maintenance regime. Even by adopting a few of the methods shown, and incorporating them into their existing practices, they could bring about significant improvements to their sports turf surfaces.
This process of educating through demonstration and discussion is vital to the survival of natural turf playing surfaces. The groundsmen at all venues were eager to learn how to protect and preserve the finest traditions of natural turf surfaces for future generations.
This tour will leave a legacy of thirteen renovated grassroots
sports pitches throughout the UK and Ireland. By doing so, not only has it provided improved playing facilities for thousands of people for the oncoming season, it will also serve to perfectly showcase that the poor standard of many natural turf surfaces is not due to inherent failures of natural turf as a playing medium, but as a result of chronic underfunding, combined with a lack of support and respect for the principles of the medium, by a cross section of authorities and organisations.
These are factors that, when combined, lead to inadequate maintenance which, in turn and over time, results in deteriorating surfaces, cancelled fixtures, poor quality player and spectator experience and falling participation rates. Just when the national strategy is supposedly designed to increase peoples’ activity levels across all manner of sports.
Somewhere, there appears to be disconnect between a left hand and a right hand communicating effectively.
All too often I encounter people in areas of responsibility who are ill informed as to the fundamental requirements of a well evolved natural system, and sceptical of the men and women who have the knowledge and experience to advise them on what it takes to nurture and sustain the living ecosystem they are responsible for preparing, so that people can enjoy playing sport.
In an era of ever greater public concern with design, aesthetics and image (particularly in young people), it is difficult to
Richard Campey speaking to delegates
understand why prioritising the repair and ongoing structured maintenance of good quality, well presented, safe, natural, environmentally responsible grass surfaces is not at the top of the agenda, especially when it comes to attracting and retaining players. We are told it is, through impressive headline figures and proposals, but a good look at the detail soon reveals that not all is what it might appear from the press releases.
Many of us in the sports turf industry have already pointed out that the cost of maintenance for a natural turf pitch is far less than the overall cost of an artificial 3G surface over the life time of the plastic carpet.
Even with these overall cost savings, it should be remembered that the maintenance and production of good quality natural turf surfaces is not inherently complicated, nor is it reliant solely on constant inputs of product and resources.
What the maintenance and production of quality natural sportsturf surfaces does require is simple; knowledge and skill.
When knowledge and skill combine into an individual, that person has the ability to do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.
A Koro Field Top Maker in action 12 I PC JUNE/JULY 2016
Using the Recycling Dresser
Sand spreading with a Dakota Topdresser
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