Winter Sports - Football GETTING Personal...
Andrew Ward ‐ he can never have too many machines ‐ he’s loving it!
Who are you? Andrew Ward, groundsman at Wingate & Finchley FC.
Family status? I have a wonderful girlfriend of seven years, Nicole.
Who’s your hero and why? My parents ‐ I don’t think anyone has worked as hard to help me to get where I am as them.
What would you change about yourself? I would love to be able to switch off and forget about work.
What’s your guilty pleasure? McDonald’s … it doesn’t help that there’s one literally next to the ground, so it’s all I smell all day.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Winning groundsman of the year for the Isthmian League this year.
What are your pet peeves? Linesmen … need I say more?
If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be? Probably the Maldives
What’s the best part of your job? Seeing that finished product on a Saturday when everything went right.
… and the worst? Turning up the day after the pitch has been decimated in the wet; it’s like a 1000 piece puzzle, but every bit looks the same.
Do you have a lifetime ambition? I would like to be able to say that I’ve managed a Football League club’s pitch.
Favourite record, and why? Michael Jackson, Smooth Criminal. The first song I truly remember liking from when I was young.
Who would you choose to spend a romantic evening with? Im not sure the Mrs would be too happy if I didn’t put her in this one.
If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? Almost certainly go tractor shopping.
If you were to describe yourself as a musical instrument, what would you be and why? Probably a triangle … I’m a bit simple.
68 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Heath Ledger, Robin Williams, Paul Walker. Some of my favourite actors that went before their time.
If you could be anyone for a day, who would it be and why? Ryan Reynolds … have you seen his wife?
Do you have any bad habits? Apparently I buy too many machines.
... or any good ones? At least I put most of them to good use?
Do you go to bed worrying about the next day’s workload? Mainly when there’s rain involved.
What are you reading at the moment? Jack Reacher, The Hard Way.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? Know when a job should be turned down, sometimes you commit too much to people please when you should have said no in the first instance.
What’s your favourite smell? Fresh cut grass ... duh.
What do you do in your spare time? Spend as much time as possible with family and friends, and try to play football as much as possible.
What’s the daftest work-related question you have ever been asked? I think my favourite was someone asking why we couldn’t just pick the worms out to stop them casting.
What’s your favourite piece of kit? In terms of day to day, I love my Dennis Premier. In terms of innovation, it’s a toss up between the Koro and Air2G2.
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Daft, committed, driven.
What talent would you like to have? I’d love to be able to fly a plane.
How do you undertake pest and weed control?
I spray for them myself.
Does your facility suffer from specific disease outbreaks?
Irregularly. Predominantly, we find red thread, though last year had a large outbreak of fusarium.
Are rabbits, badgers, foxes, geese, chafer grubs, worms etc. a problem?
Rabbits, foxes and worms are our main problems. The rabbits and foxes we are unable to do much about, but for the worms we are preparing to trial everything under the sun to find a successful treatment.
What would you consider to be the state of our industry?
I think we are in a tough spot. There is a lot of pressure for people to get the surfaces right, however there really isn’t the recognition from the public of the amount of work that truly goes into maintaining pitches to such a level. Whether this is because of a lack of education from our groups or a general ignorance from the public I am unsure.
What’s in the shed? The club owns:
Dennis G860, 8 blade cutting cassette and verticutter cassette
4” wheel to wheel marker I supplement this with;
Dennis G860, 6 and 8 blade cutting cassettes
Dennis Premier 36” Ransomes Mastiff 36”
Jacobsen Greens King V ‐ 7 blade cylinders
Ransomes Bobcat banks mower Are we undervalued?
I feel this is probably a fair question. There are so many people I know that work themselves silly to make sure that their pitches are in the condition the clubs want them to be in. And I don’t think that people understand the pressures that can accompany maintaining these surfaces, especially at the highest level. You are at the mercy of the weather and sometimes there is very little you can do when it goes against you.
How would you raise our profile?
That’s a tough question to answer… I think a lot of people still view groundsmen as a group of pipe‐smoking lads who irregularly sit on a tractor towing a set of gangs and occasionally marking a white line, whereas a lot of the true groundsmen of today are intelligent, well‐read and intuitive people who are genuinely trying to improve the standard of pitches.
Do you attend industry events?
I attend BTME and all other important dates in the calendar where possible.
Hayter Harrier 56 rotary mower Stihl blower
Broyhill Self propelled sprayer (one of only 3 in the country)
New Holland TCE 50 tractor Charterhouse Vertidrain 7316 Charterhouse Vertidrain 7521 John Deere 5090R Amazone GH180 Koro Field Topmaker 2000 Vredo disc seeder Air2G2
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