EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS
usable surfaces stems from Rory’s career history and what has been achieved at the sites he has previously worked at. His exposure to groundsmanship came early in life through his dad, Alan Ferguson, who turned Ipswich Town’s Portman Road into a multi-award-winning treasure in the old Division One and Premier League, whilst also contributing to the expansion of their Playford Road training ground. Valuable lessons on budgets, time management and presentation were also learnt at Ransomes Jacobsen, Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham Football Club and, as we walk around the sports field, there are plenty of examples to pick from where the fine details have been transferred to his own work.
“I got involved in this industry because of my dad, Alan. He’s been a groundsman for many years now starting in Scotland before making his way down to England and he’s moving to Switzerland to work for FIFA.” “Being a groundsman wasn’t the first job I wanted to do. Originally, I looked at being a teacher but, after working at Ipswich with my
We stripe the driveway on both sides and make sure it’s joined up, so you have the light stripes following you as you go in and
”
following you as you go out, that’s something that I picked up from Tottenham and it helps to give a bit of a wow factor
90 PC August/September 2018
dad as a summer a job, I realised how much I enjoyed working outside. Then with getting to use the machinery and learn a bit about the techniques, I got to see how much goes into the job and that really sparked my interest.”
“From Ipswich Town, I moved to
Ransomes to work on what they now affectionately call the ‘RJ National Golf Course’ at their factory in Ipswich. They used to do a scholarship programme at golf courses, but decided to bring it in-house to combine the education and demonstration aspects for new customers and I was approached by them to go in for an interview and ended up there for two and a half years.”
“When I started at Ransomes I didn’t have much golf experience, but going from football to golf has really helped me here at Finborough because this a multi-sport site. Working with a reduced budget with less fertiliser and water inputs was definitely a big plus because we don’t have an irrigation system or sustained fertiliser programme at the school yet, but knowing when to do
certain things and when to hold back is something I learnt at Ransomes.” “The complete opposite of that was working at Tottenham; that taught me what can be achieved when you have everything you want. We were resourceful because we didn’t want to waste money, so even though we had a bigger budget and had everything we needed in the shed, we were also exploring ways to do things in-house before looking to bring in a new machine.” “Paul Jones, Nick Phillips and Wayne Billing were the site managers when I was there and working with different people who had different approaches to looking after grass gives you a better overall perspective of how it can be done, and also shows you that there isn’t just one way.” “We all rotated between the managers, so it helped us see the ultra-fine detail in the first-team pitches and then a more pragmatic approach working on the youth team pitches that were getting hammered because maintaining them had to be constantly assessed to make the surfaces even better. So, having that experience of
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