FOOTBALL
S
cott Humphries has been interested in grass from a young age which, he says, “is very strange!” Being an Oxford United fan, and with the club’s old
training ground in Milton the next village to where he lived with his parents, he took it upon himself to meet up with Nick Baldwin, the club’s then head groundsman, and asked if he could help out.
“I was thirteen years old at that time, and I was lucky enough to be allowed to help the groundstaff at the stadium on match days. I did this for a few seasons until Nick left the club to join Brentford Football Club. Then, nine years ago and out of the blue, I got a phone call from Nick offering me an apprenticeship, and I jumped at the chance. Whilst at Brentford, I did my NVQ Level 2 in Sports Turf and also my spraying certificates.”
“After three and a half seasons working at Brentford, there were a few issues with the stadium pitch and the club brought in contractors. We were then transferred over to Sportsturf, who looked after numerous clubs in our area at the time. I worked with them for twelve months, but I wasn’t based at Brentford anymore. I was travelling all over doing work and, with having a new baby, it just wasn’t ideal. A job came up at a Cokethorpe school back in Oxfordshire, so I ended up working there for two-years. Through the old chairman at Oxford United, I knew they were looking at building a new training facility. So, in July 2017, I was offered a job at the old training ground before moving to the new site. I have been here for the last two and half years.”
Working for the club he loves again was Scott’s dream, but sometimes it didn’t feel like that. “The first year back was difficult. The old site, which is just across the road from the new one, had one pitch for the first team and four for the academy. I was told that, in the previous season, the first team training pitch had been so bad they had to train off site for most of the season, so there was my first challenge. With the help of the management team, some tough love and some clever movement of the training drills, we managed to keep them on the pitch all season, but it was a struggle, I can tell you. We have now moved to the new site and it has numerous problems which challenge me every day.”
When the new site was built, it was going to be a community hub with football, cricket and softball, until Oxford United bought the whole site and made it into their training facility.
The new training ground used to be an allotment and is built on clay with an inch of sand on the top; this brings lots of problems
and challenges for Scott to work around. “When constructing the pitches, they used what materials were on site and, in my opinion, it was poor. We have drainage that was put in every five metres, but that doesn’t really work because of the volume of clay. We have drainage that was put in every five metres, but that doesn’t really work because of the volume of clay. The water does not get through and sits in the top three to four inches, even though we spike every week to try and keep it open. Ideally, I would dig them all out and start again; it’s just a nightmare.”
“We don’t have any irrigation here, which is a bugger in the summer months. We have two water points on the cricket square, which we won’t have access to much longer with no cricket coming here. Ideally, the manager would like us to water the pitch before training, but it’s not possible. When we koroed off the pitches in May, we hired in a temporary 10,000-litre water bowser from a local farmer. Then, Rob Green Irrigation came in and managed to wire up a
I believe if we don’t get it right at the beginning, it will just come back and bite us. If we can’t afford to do it right this year, save the money for next year. Do it once and do it right
PC December/January 2020 71
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