FOOTBALL
The 2019-20 season has proved problematic for many lower league sides, with mild temperatures and torrential rain hampering pitch
preparations. For Shrewsbury Town, an extended FA Cup run, which saw them host Liverpool at home, added to the problems for Dave Saltman and the grounds team. But with the likelihood of more money for the coffers, even the odd pitch invasion can be tolerated
W
e have been maintaining the surfaces at Shrewsbury Town FC for the last four seasons and I have written several articles on the
works that we have carried out previously, both at the Montgomery Waters Meadow stadium and at the recently acquired Sundorne training ground. As a fairly established League One club,
it’s nice to be able to say that their finances are well governed, although that means that any expense required, capital or otherwise, are scrutinised and only made available with a damn good business case… and even then I don’t take it as a given! We start every season with high aspirations, to retain a good quality grass cover throughout the 40-week playing calendar, so I usually split the year into
temperatures, the groundsman must work diligently to try and keep the grass healthy, upright and the water flowing quickly from the surface. It’s a time when you’d prefer to see less games, as well as avoid doing too much disruptive work on the surfaces to retain as much grass cover as possible. To me, this is the time of the season when the hard endeavours from the first and second quarter come into their own. The early work in producing and establishing a good healthy population of grass, preferably with as little weed grass as possible in the spring/summer and the encouragement of a good root mass, that has reasonable depth by the end of the autumn. All of which becomes a big aid to helping the pitch through the depressing winter months. Having worked at stadiums for over thirty years, I have become far more philosophical and pragmatic about each season; it’s very much swings and roundabouts. You have one season where the team have poor cup results and/or are drawn away, and the weather is generally kind on match days, then another season where there is an inordinate amount of home cup games and the weather seems to save its worst just for match day.
This season has been amazingly mild but
”
particularly wet so far and, in the case of Shrewsbury
Town, there have been a lot of cup games, most of
which have been drawn and played at home or required a replay at home
quarters. The first quarter is the renovation and growing in period. For many of us, this window has shortened and shortened, so what used to be a standard twelve weeks can be as little as four or five weeks these days.
The second quarter is the start of the playing season during the summer/autumn growth period. A time when you continue to mature the grass, but it resists and recovers quickly from any wear and, to be honest, I’m comfortable allowing as many games as we can get on the pitch (in terms of regular first team fixtures) being played.
The third quarter is the worst and most difficult; temperatures drop, the plant stops growing and there is little to no recovery from maybe October until March, or even April. I often refer to this time as the damage limitation quarter. Due to low soil and air
This season has been amazingly mild but particularly wet so far and, in the case of Shrewsbury Town, there have been a lot of cup games, most of which have been drawn and played at home or required a replay at home. Even in the
Leasing.com Trophy. we played the away game at home against Manchester City as they have special dispensation in this competition not to play at the Etihad. Add in the Central League Cup (reserves) and FA Youth Cup matches, as well as hosting an England U20’s game and our annual Armed Forces final, we are up to twenty-nine games already this season as I write this at the start of February. Over half of these played from November to January during some of the wettest inclement weather I’ve seen. Of these games, eight have been hosted on wet days, one in particular when we recorded 62mm of rain from midday Friday to 1.00pm Saturday. In the third round FA Cup replay against Bristol City, the pitch just about drained sufficiently from some heavy downpours before they kicked off. If this extra game wasn’t bad enough, the late home goal and a jubilant crowd invading the surface afterwards to celebrate just crowned our long day!
If I just fill in a few spaces; this season’s renovations carried out at the end of May 2019 were basic - scarify, vertidrain, overseed, topdress with 90 tonnes of sand and fertilise. (Only every other year do we Koro and cultivate with some additional concentrated fibresand incorporated). We also went some way to addressing a serious historic pH problem of 4.2, spreading eight tonnes of hydrated lime once the grass was growing in June 2019. Our nutritional programme contains three
PC February/March 2020 77
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