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PUBLIC PLACES


New starter Steve


Karl Smith (left) with Andy Plant


Selection of the correct machinery plant is crucial - second only to the correct selection of staff. We’re only as good as the workforce we work alongside


team cover 28,000 metres of linemarking every week, for about thirty-three weeks of the year … that’s 560 miles of linemarking! It is no mean feat in terms of challenges the team face. David commented: “Obviously, the vast number of our sites are open access and, therefore, accessible to the public twenty-four hours a day. You can just imagine the kind of challenges this poses. On the pitches there is a lot of non-regulated play; you put up a set of goal posts and people will play in them - which, in a way is good, as more than ever we want the public to enjoy open spaces, but obviously that means the pitches are getting far more wear than we budget for. There is a lot to cope with to be able to bring them to a playable standard and we have to deal with a vast amount of dog fouling, littering and even cars driving over the surfaces too.” Karl added: “Another big problem we face is that many of the parks were established


decades ago and football wouldn’t have been a consideration at that time. This means they haven’t had proper construction, no drainage and are mostly a clay-based profi le, so we really are battling against the ground conditions all year round.” “To top it all off ,” Andy interjected, “our budgets have gradually been cut over the years, which means we have to spread funds very thinly over all the sites. It’s crazy that big clubs have a budget for one pitch, similar to what we have to maintain seventy- six pitches!”


“It’s hard to deal with the pressure from players and coaches who expect a higher level of presentation these days. They watch TV and can see how Premier League clubs look, but it’s a diff erent ball game - excuse the pun! We don’t have drainage or endless budgets and we come up against quite a lot of criticism on a regular basis. Teams get very protective of their pitch and expect us


56


PC December/January 2021





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