STEVE HARPER has been Head Groundsman at Aston Villa’s Training Ground since 1971.
Life long Villa fan JOHN REYNOLDS visits the club’s new multi-million pound training ground to make sure that his beloved team are being given the best possible facilities.
HEROES & VILLAINS
S
teve Harper, Head Groundsman at the Aston Villa Bodymoor Heath Training Ground, is one of those guys that you just have to admire. A true unsung hero, for 17 years he cycled to work in all weathers and toiled alone in maintaining Villa’s training facilities at Bodymoor Heath, near Coleshill on the northern outskirts of Birmingham. He laughs about it now, but has to admit that it was a lonely existence then with very few resources available apart from a couple of mowers and a bit of aeration kit.
Things change though, and viewing the new state-of-the- art indoor training complex which opened in May 2007, and new all weather pitches currently under construction during my guided tour with Steve in mid January, it is hard to believe the transformation. As befits a high ranking Premier League team the importance of high quality training facilities to match the stadium, have not been lost on Villa’s management and investors.
In the early 1970s Aston Villa Chairman Doug Ellis recommended his fellow directors purchase farmland at
36
Bodymooor Heath for training purposes. The site was naturally free draining with 20cm of topsoil over a gravel bed, below which lay very deep sand deposits. The adjacent area is still being actively quarried for sand. Very soon the newly built facilities
were in use and considered, at the time, to be very high quality, compared to the old Trinity Road training ground at Aston. By the late 1990s however, Doug Ellis was receiving heavy criticism from Villa Manager John Gregory for lack of investment. Accusations of Ellis of being “stuck in a time warp” were publicly supported and widely debated by many frustrated Villa fans. Finally, bowing to pressure in Nov 2005, Ellis announced plans
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