Winter Sports - Football


amount of our ALS‐bought fertiliser paid for by Wolves. This is all in exchange for them using this pitch for their Under 23 squad. It’s their generous method of payment for use of the grounds, basically.


Is there anything you can tell me about the history of the stadium and the club?


The stadium was built in 2003, and it holds over 6,000 people. It’s never been returfed, but is reseeded annually, again by ALS. The 14th May is when we’re going to begin renovation. We buy most of our stuff from them, whilst I have my own mowers and other small bits of kit.


What does all this contract work free you up to do?


If the weather allows, the pitch needs to be brushed, divoted, cut‐and‐collected, rolled, and we put on some fertiliser when we can. The last lot of fertiliser I put on was in February, which consisted of thirteen bags of Maxwell Advanced and ten bags of Lebanon


“ 48 I PC APRIL/MAY 2018


ProScape. They’re both granular fertilisers and the Lebanon is slow‐release, which frees me up more to do other jobs.


Do you get other help; agronomists, for example?


We had an agronomist come in just about three weeks ago, actually. He came at 7:30am and was here until about 10am. Because we’ve got a little trouble with the drainage of the pitch, everything we do technically tends to be aimed towards figuring out how best to solve that. He agreed that we do have a drainage problem (that’s caused a lot of games to be called off). That’s the thinking behind the two intense verti‐draining visits close together, especially with big games at the close of the season coming up.


What’s causing the drainage difficulty?


It’s to do with the profile partly, but it looks to us as though a couple of the lines of drainage may have collapsed, although it’s


hard to pinpoint exactly when. There are also a couple of points on the pitch which form slight saucers, and I think, even with good turf, water will tend to hold towards the surface if the ground dips like that.


Do you have a realistic hope of getting those fixed?


We’re all hoping so. It has a chance of being done this summer, all being well. That’s nothing definitely in place for this year, but there’s been promising talk of it.


Interesting that the profile struggles to drain with the ground only being fifteen years old…


The agronomist dug down through the layers, and obviously we look for thatch as everyone does, but we haven’t really got any of that. The make‐up of the upper level is a 70/30 loam mix, so should be good really. The first 10‐12mm always seems to be holding for some reason and we don’t know why yet.


I think in the three previous seasons, I’d only had to use the frost sheets once. It’s been quite dry for years. Must’ve worn out about two or three pitchforks, I think


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