UNIVERSITY
Getting Personal
Kris Nurse - he’s a pain in the grass but is always happy!
Who are you? Kris Nurse, Team Leader at Loughborough University.
Family status? Married with one daughter.
Who’s your hero and why? My dad; he taught me the right way to be in life.
What’s been the highlight of your grounds career so far? Groundsman of the Year winner and 3rd nationally at Loughborough Dynamo FC.
If your younger self saw you now, what would he think? He would be saying ‘you’ve put a bit on mate.’
Which famous people wind you up? Piers Morgan.
What job would you love, other than your own? I’d love to have been a professional footballer.
What is your favourite film? Love all the James Bond films.
What scares you? Spiders.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? In this industry you’re always going to make mistakes - learn from them and be confident in what you produce.
What is your favourite sport? Football.
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Lee Evans, my granddad Norman and Norman Wisdom.
72 PC August/September 2020
What would your autobiography be called… and who would play you in the film? A Pain in the Grass, but I don’t know who would play me to be fair?
Which three albums would you take to a desert island? Oasis - Definitely Maybe, Kasabian and The Smiths.
What’s the daftest work-related question you have ever been asked? Do you use different seeds to get stripes in the pitch?
What’s your favourite piece of kit? The Koro Field Top Maker.
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Confident, joker and happy.
What is the single most useful thing you could tell a 16-year- old groundsperson/ greenkeeper? If you enjoy the job there is so much more to it now to learn about and improve on - the sky’s the limit!
What talent would you like to have? To sing.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? Anything that stops unauthorised use of our pitches and reduces the damage that sometimes results.
to tell last December because it was quite mild. In January and February, we had a cold blitz and, as advised by SGL, we moved it around in certain areas. I definitely noticed vast improvements and recovery was a lot better. Before lockdown, we had spoken to Tom, and we were going to get two second-hand larger rigs, but obviously with everything that has happened, they are now on the back burner.”
The decision to invest in a new pitch for the stadium was long overdue; the older fibresand based pitch just could not cope with the amount of games. “When the stadium was built, we had a fibresand pitch put in which would be more durable and could host more games. In the last year of the fibresand pitch, we had ninety-two games on it, drainage also needed addressing as it was capped and the pitch was suffering with a black layer. The main issues
were that the pitch was not a fully constructed fibresand surface; we had basically incorporated fibresand into the existing sand-based pitch and we were Koroing year on year, without replacing the fibre content. It was struggling to drain, and it was unbelievably hard, even with all the aeration we were undertaking.” “One incident we had was when we hosted a Champions League under 23s game between Leicester City and Copenhagen. Two hours before the game, we had a bucket load of rain come down and the water on the pitch just did not budge, so we had to call it off. Unfortunately, we needed these things to happen on those big occasions to force the powers that be to realise the problems we were facing.” Once the go-ahead was given to replace the existing stadium pitch, it was a matter of deciding what would be the best hybrid pitch for
Kris and his team also look after the hybrid pitch
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