EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS
Durham University ’s scale of participation in sport demands a highly regimented grounds team. Greg Rhodes met up with Paul Derrick, the facility’s Playing Fields Supervisor to find out more
Paul Derrick and his team to discover the challenges of tending two large sports sites. Adding to the plethora of pitches, natural and synthetic, is a £32m health and wellbeing centre, complete with indoor cricket hall, 12-court multi-use sports hall and gym. A wellbeing trail snakes from Durham centre to Maiden Castle on the city outskirts, part of a sport and health strategy the university is promoting. The university’s 2017-2027 masterplan identified Maiden Castle as “capable of absorbing further concentrated development”. Delivery of new facilities would allow it “to compete sustainably at the highest levels of British university sport” whilst also “supporting increasing overall levels of student, staff and local community participation in sports and physical activity”. The rise in Durham’s student population, and consequent upsurge in demand for sporting provision, has brought fresh challenges to Paul and his team of two as
T
he finishing touches were being applied to Durham University’s expansive new Sports and Wellbeing Park when I met up with Playing Fields Supervisor
the fixtures calendar burgeons. Paul has worked here twenty-eight years, leaving the then Leyland Vehicles sportsground after DAF acquired the manufacturer. “Lancashire Football Association bought the pitches but we lost the cricket ground - the team played in the Northern Cricket League,” he recalls. Paul left school at sixteen, starting work for the Central Lancashire New Town Agency before a stint at a tree nursery. “They sent me to Myerscough College on a four-day block release course in Amenity Horticulture,” he explains, “but I was keener on sportsturf management although I was not a player as such.” “My brother-in-law worked at Leyland and tipped me off about a vacancy there after the groundsman just upped and left one day. They really threw me in at the deep end as the college hadn’t prepared me for sports turfcare.”
One early mishap is still sharp in Paul’s memory. “I remember the two crown green bowling rinks had a worm problem. I applied Chlordane, which was permitted in those days, but I overcooked it, miscalculating the dosage, and the grass turned yellow.” “I learned a hard lesson that day. But, you know what, after that we never had a worm problem in all the eleven years I worked there,” he smiles ruefully. “By April 1991, DAF had acquired the site and they planned to build houses on the ground, but a problem occurred and nothing happened.” Word got around about Paul’s turfcare prowess and High Wycombe Cricket Club approached him to fill a March-October position as head groundsman. “I bumped
into my interviewer in Antigua ten years ago when I was following the England team’s tour of the West Indies,” Paul says. The Durham University opportunity appealed to Paul more though, partly due to the upheaval in moving south to Buckinghamshire. “As all my family lived locally in Leyland, I decided to take up the post here.”
The grounds team’s job has intensified and increased in Mark’s time at the university grounds, he notes. “Maiden Castle has changed beyond all recognition from my early days. Facilities were pretty sparse then.”
“In the early 1990s, Durham had 4,000 to 5,000 students - that’s risen to 17,000 today, with plans to rise to 21,000. I lived on site up the hill until the university changed its policy and they rented it out, so we moved away offsite to Spennymoor.”
“The grounds never opened on Sundays or even weekends. We’ve moved to a 24/7 schedule now - with club, juniors and students football training round the clock.” That’s not all. “Durham Women's FC is to
make us their base,” Paul reveals. “The FA visited recently to accredit the facility.” Another sign of how the university is shaping provision to match demand. Maiden Castle’s outdoor provision first included a sand-based hockey pitch installed in 1989, three grass hockey pitches - two of them later replaced with water- based synthetic surfaces, 3G pitch, a cricket square, rugby pitch and three football pitches on the bulk of the site.
Included in the latest improvements are a new 3G pitch, upgraded hockey pitch, more grass playing areas and dramatically
I applied Chlordane, which was permitted in those days, but I
”
overcooked it. I learned a hard lesson that day. But, you know what, after that we never had a worm problem in all the eleven years I worked there!
Paul Derrick, Playing Fields Supervisor PC December/January 2020 95
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