FOOTBALL
Before
After
element in me that I didn’t know of at fi rst. A natural aptitude of touching the soil, smelling it and coming up with an answer. I’m pretty sure my parents and grandparents, who also had experience in this type of work, passed this on to me!” From that point things started to fall into place for David. He graduated, joined the GMA (IOG back then), started his own businesses and even became a teacher at his old school. After many years of turf consulting at sports clubs, he wanted to prove to himself, that not only he was able to support people in making the best decisions for their grass, he was also able to take full responsibility of a ground himself. Hednesford Town FC was the lucky one, as he was able to turn their pitch into one of the club’s greenest revenue streams, and one of the best pitches in non-league football.
The joy of dealing with challenges
But it wasn’t easy for David. “I encountered a pitch with a bare construction consisting of
95% weeds, no drainage system and a small budget to work with. We had ninety-one matches on our pitch in one season, and eighty-nine the year before. So, apart from the fact the pitch is being overused, it also doesn’t have a solid structure to endure it. Yet we managed to take the poor pitch up to Football League standards.” And that is exactly what David likes most: “Taking something that is a mess and turning it into something beautiful. Presenting the pitch, seeing the reaction on the people’s faces, and the praise that we get for what we’ve achieved with our budgets. That’s better than any payment. And yes, of course, you get frustrated. Mother nature will always keep you on your toes. You get something perfect and the next day something destroys it and you have to start over again, but that’s all part of it.”
Non-league clubs and events
Despite the ninety games a season, David and the club still manage to attract additional events to the stadium for extra revenue.
U18s World Cup Qualifi ers, the Women’s Euro Qualifi ers and Premier League youth team matches amongst them. David believes all clubs in non-league Football should be able to increase grass quality despite the limited budgets: “If David Bates at Hednesford Town FC can do it, everyone can. With a bit of knowledge, passion and technology, every club at our level should be able to host more games and increase the quality of play.”
Discovering a new technology
David was introduced to grow lighting technology last year, as he was lucky enough to win a BU10 grow light in SGL’s Basic Line contest at Saltex. He participated because he believed he needed all the help he could get to get through the winter months: “I never win anything, so I was dumbstruck when they called to tell me I’d won! With ninety matches a season, the plant is already under a great deal of stress. What we needed was photosynthesis to take place
Before 64 PC February/March 2021
After
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