Groundstaff Honour Fallen Hero PC Keith Palmer

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Peterborough United will pay their own small tribute to fallen policeman Keith Palmer tomorrow (April 1).

Palmer lost his life in the recent Westminster attack. He was a long-standing Charlton season ticket-holder, the team Posh host in a League One clash at the ABAX Stadium tomorrow.

There will be a minute’s silence before the match as it’s the first one played by Charlton since the incident.

But the Posh groundstaff will also change the pitch patterns at the ABAX to honour PC Palmer and all serving police officers.

Head Posh groundsman Daniel Selcraig said: “In light of the recent attacks in London and in light of PC Keith Palmer being a Charlton fan, the pitch patterns for tomorrow’s match will be changed to include thin blue lines.

“The thin blue line is a charity which supports police officers up and down the country and provides them with an excellent support network.

“I thought it would be a brilliant tribute to burn a line into the bands in the pitch in memory of the victims and injured.

“It will look similar to Manchester City’s pitch and remind us all of the brilliant work our emergency services do.”

Charlton have draped a scarf over PC Palmer’s regular seat at the Valley in his honour.

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Head Groundsman Ensures Essex Are Pitch-Perfect

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Bathed in early-spring sunlight this week, the renamed Cloudfm County Ground in Chelmsford looked as pretty as a picture as the final preparations were being made ahead of the start of another season.

Stuart Kerrison, head groundsman since 1991, looked out from the pavilion and declared: “I think most people looking at it would think it doesn’t look in bad nick: it’s green, it’s stripy, it looks fairly flat …”

However, groundsmen are pessimists by nature and Kerrison is no different. There is an almighty “but” lying in wait to ambush the sentence: “… all I can see are imperfections. I know where all the bad bits are. It’s about 80 percent there at the moment.”
Kerrison sees “fairy rings” all over the outfield, patches where the grass has died back because of a lack of moisture and bemoans a drainage system that has to cope with a six-foot drop from end to end. He has a bucket-list of how he would spend any slice that came his way of the £1.3 million annual payment to counties the ECB are proposing if the city franchise scheme goes ahead.

Kerrison is a happy soul really and especially happy in his work that brought him runners-up spot for the fourth time in the 2016 Groundsman of the Year award, second only to Headingley’s Andy Fogarty. Considering Chelmsford is “only a provincial ground”, to use his words, and is constantly up against the big Test-match stadiums, it is no mean achievement.

The pristine square is ready for the off. The strips for the three-day game against Durham MCCU, starting on Sunday, and the opening Specsavers County Championship match against Lancashire next Friday, are already cut and primped, as well as the practice wickets on either side for batsmen and bowlers.
Apart from a new stand at the Hayes Close End, and a general lick of paint, the most notable improvement to the ground will become apparent if and when Chelmsford suffers anything more than a shower. The impromptu lakes that form in front of the Tom Pearce Stand at the River End should be a thing of the past.
“We put a bit of extra drainage around the square because all the water sheds off the covers and sheets,” Kerrison says. “Then we put a gravel band in, which is 300mm deep every 750mm to insert a gravel bed feeding into all the drains that we’ve got. We’ve had problems with the water gathering down there in the past and we’ve ended up with massive lakes. It goes eventually, but we need it to go quicker so we can get as much play as we can.
“But it’s only a stopgap as far as I’m concerned before we spend proper money on doing the whole outfield. We try to stay within budget – I spend money like it’s my own. But the outfield needs a bit more levelling, it needs a bit more drainage and it needs proper irrigation. If you’ve got £200,000 to spare we can do it next winter.”

That is for the future. For the present, Kerrison and his team of four full-timers and two apprentices are looking forward to life in Division One after Essex’s promotion. “This should be a good year,” he says. “I think we’ll stay up.”

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A Lesson In Being Pitch Perfect

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Few schools in the UK can claim to have over 22 different sports pitches located within their grounds. However, for Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate in York, their sporting facilities rival many of the country’s leading premiership clubs.

Opened in 1912, the Independent boarding school’s sporting curriculum is one of the most expansive in the country, with tennis, basketball, handball, hockey, rugby, football and cricket just a few of the sports on offer.

Home to 1500 students from over 66 different countries on a 200 acre campus. Continuous capital investment over the years has transformed the site, and the last 6 years has seen over £20 million dedicated solely to improving the 34 acres of outdoor training facilities alone.

Joining Queen Ethelburga’s in the autumn of 2016, Grounds Manager, Ben Grigor, and his three-man team, represent the school’s new grounds department and they have a determination for the sporting grounds to be some of the best in the UK. Having worked for iconic venues including the RICOH Arena, Kassam Stadium and the Ibrox Stadium, Ben relishes the challenge of maintaining such varying and high profile sporting facilities.

With £20 million invested in new pitches alone, the team’s daily maintenance requires high power machinery as they have natural grass, synthetic, water-based and traditional sand-based pitches to contend with.

“Having maintained groundcare for renowned sporting events including the Commonwealth Games and the Euros in 2012, I know that the quality and condition of the Queen Ethelburga’s pitches really are second to none,” said Ben. “When visitors come and see the sheer expanse of the site and its condition, they can’t believe that the sporting facilities belong to a school, and this is an expectation that we strive to maintain.”

It was the school’s commitment to their sporting vision that forged the partnership between Ben and leading local groundcare dealer, Russells of Hull. The dealership is at the forefront of providing first class machinery and aftersales support across the region and it was this unrivalled service that made the partnership between themselves and the school so strong.

The Collegiate purchased nine Kubota machines from Russell’s, including Kubota’s leading RTVX900 utility vehicle, two L4240 compact tractors, four W831R-PRO pedestrian walk-behind mowers, two G23 ride-on mowers along with two Kubota trailers.

“When we were resourcing new groundcare machines, it was paramount that we chose vehicles that facilitated the consistent maintenance of 22 pitches, day in – day out. When I joined the Collegiate in September, they already had some older Kubota machines that had done not hundreds, but thousands of hours of work and they’re still going strong. So, when it came to maintaining the new pitches, I knew that Kubota was up to the task.

“The RTVX900 is extremely useful when navigating both staff and equipment around site, especially for light towing jobs when both of the L4240 tractors are in use. With such a significant investment into both the pitches and sporting facilities, it is essential that we ensure that the machines work as economically as possible and meet the site’s varying requirements.”

It was Kubota’s compatibility with a wide range of implements and machines across the range that made the manufacturer such a clear choice. The two G23 ride-on mowers are at the forefront of the pitches daily maintenance, providing clean and consistent cutting every day, while also being a useful tool during winter for cleaning up leaves and debris after professional and school matches. Supporting the G23’s are two manual L4240 compact tractors which provide easy operation for the team when completing spraying, top dressing and aeration work.

“The Collegiate’s recent investment into its facilities, staff and machinery already reflects their continued commitment to making the sporting ground one of the best in the country. Big changes are set for the year ahead and it’s up to us and our machines to ensure that the pitches are kept to the highest possible standards.”

For more information on Kubota and its extensive range of solutions for the groundcare sectors, or to find your local dealer, visit www.kubota.co.uk or call 01844 268000.

Newquay Golf Club Proves Slow And Steady Wins The Race

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Since Dan Kendle, head greenkeeper at Newquay Golf Club, arrived at the links course overlooking Fistral beach in Cornwall in 2014, he has been steadily adding Toro to its shed.

From the first Toro, the revolutionary Greensmaster 3400 TriFlex to the most recent, a Groundsmaster 4300-D that arrived in the spring, the club now boasts a Toro fleet to “rival most others” says Dan. And the difference both Dan’s and Toro’s arrival has made at the club is most significant in the health and quality of the grass.

“When I arrived at Newquay Golf Club the turf was in a very sorry state,” says Dan. “There was a lot of disease scarring on the greens and the sward was very weak. It’s a hard-working course, open 365 days of the year and it needed a lot of improvement.

“Woodhall Spa, where I’d been for 15 years before heading back to Cornwall, uses solely Toro machines so I was well versed in their capabilities. Working with the management committee at Newquay we came up with a strategy that would allow us to get the best out of the course, acquiring machines through Devon Garden Machinery for the most pressing issues first when the budget could accommodate the investment.”

It’s a strategy that has worked; in less than three years the proof is clearly in the turf, the health and species composition of which has improved hugely, a fact supported by the members whose feedback is “really positive”.

Particularly instrumental in that improvement, says Dan, is the formidable pedestrian aerator, the Toro ProCore 648. “One of the early arrivals, the ProCore is one of our most invaluable pieces of kit. With interchangeable tines, it will do anything and everything when it comes to aeration. We can micro-tine in the summer and you wouldn’t even know it had been done and most importantly it doesn’t disturb play. We’re lucky to have really good drainage, but we use the ProCore monthly without fail to maintain the standards we are becoming known for.”

The ProCore also proves its worth in the club’s bi-annual maintenance weeks in March and October. Designed to help ease compaction and aid the turf’s all-important free draining quality, these maintenance weeks see Dan and his greenkeeping team of four solid tine, overseed, fertilise and topdress the greens, aprons and surrounds to help ‘repair’ the course after the hard weather conditions of winter and the heavy footfall conditions of summer.

So what next for the 126-year-old, par 69, 6141-yard course? Dan tells us it’s more of the same, with a real push to keep improving and elevating the course to be one of the best in the county joining fellow Cornish and Toro club Trevose in the top three.

And we have no doubt they will succeed; after all you don’t have to be the hare to win the race!