Winter Sports - Football “


had two training fields in addition to the main First XV ground.”


Like I now am, Dan Duffy was very regimented. After a week of perfecting the surface, he’d pull you up on a weed at the side of the pitch, and that’s how


demanding I like to be of my pitch too


“I trained somebody for three months before leaving and, a month later, he left. Dan Duffy had heard that I’d left and invited me back to the Liberty.”


“On the back of that, I progressed up to deputy head groundsperson and, not long after that, we won the award for ‘Best Pitch in the Premier League’.”


“Almost 75% of my training was under Dan. Almost everything I know now and the way I work comes from him.”


“Like I now am, he was very regimented. After a week of perfecting the surface, he’d pull you up on a weed at the side of the pitch, and that’s how demanding I like to be of my pitch too.”


“Finally, I’d decided I had come as far as I would do, heard the job was coming up here and, obviously, decided to go for it.” “Swansea had offered to match the offer made by London Stadium and the living costs here are high, but it’s something I had to do when the previous head groundsman left. I said I’d take it for that role. And, I’m coming up on a year served here now.”


London Stadium is a gem of


modern complex development and features some


engineering quirks which


allow it to transform quickly in form to


accommodate the crowd layouts for various event types.


This includes the bottom tier of football stands, detached from the upper tier, being able to simply tuck away underneath to reveal the athletics tracks beneath. It therefore caters for athletics events, music concerts and other field sports, as well as its most frequent use as a football ground.


These include, according to Wikipedia, “several 2015 Rugby [union] World Cup matches, two England rugby league Test matches, and both the 2017 IAAF World Championships in Athletics and the 2017 World Para Athletics Championships” and “… the finish of the Great Newham London Run”.


The stadium has also recently gained the rights to host a professional baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.


This is all because the stadium was originally designed to last, at a reasonable public budget, for just a few years beyond the 2012 London Olympics, before being demolished and having its land freed. The initial cost was relatively modest for an Olympic Stadium, at £486 million (£619 adjusted for inflation), plus £274 million for its 2016 Premier League renovation. When it became clear that the ground would well‐serve a Premier League football team, the upper tier was reconstructed, and was then around twice its current size. The capacity has, therefore, evolved from 80,000 for Olympic events (which it still sometimes holds in its part‐standing concert format), to 66,000 for major sporting events and 57,000 when regulated. Whilst this open, ovoid space was originally prejudged for the way it might perform in terms of football matchday atmosphere, these worries were quashed, and James said: “There were doubts at first. But, when you walk out of the interior on matchday, there’s no place that feels like it.”


76 I PC JUNE/JULY 2018


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