Together, we’ll beat coronavirus

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Together, we’ll beat coronavirus: We at Turf Matters are well aware of the impact Coronavirus is having on every aspect of our lives.

It is something that has not been faced by any of us in our lifetimes.

Together, we’ll beat coronavirus

Together, we’ll beat coronavirus

We are all trying to get through the next few weeks and months as best as we can. Keeping working, if we are at all able to, helps retain some sort of normality in what are anything but normal times.

We are a small, close-knit industry which is good in so many ways. We always have someone to call on while help is always there when needed. In other ways it is not so good however. Being small makes us more vulnerable and we can lack the resources which help bigger industries cushion themselves through hard times. It can be a hand to mouth existence, something we’ve seen when weather extremes have impacted on various elements of our industry.

It all means we must stick together wherever possible. For that reason we at Turf Matters are giving a shout out to all our partnering companies.

We wish you all well over the difficult times ahead. You can be assured that Turf Matters will be with you, side by side, through it all.

We not only have our health to protect but our futures and we will provide all the help we can to showcase the work you continue to do and perhaps shine a light on the wonderful, often behind the scenes acts of kindness for which our great industry is known.

Let’s take care, let’s stay well, let’s stick together, let’s get through this.

Scott MacCallum, editor

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Inverallan expands Pellenc fleet

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Inverallan expands Pellenc fleet: Inverallan Landscapes has taken one step further in its quest to become fossil fuel free by expanding its Pellenc portfolio with the purchase of two Rasion Easy self-propelled mowers and a set of Airion blowers.

Step by step, Inverallan Landscapes, a gardening and grounds maintenance contracting business in Stirling, is changing the way it does business. By integrating battery-operated equipment and reducing its carbon footprint, it hopes to offer customers a completely ‘clean’ service – according to managing director John Maxwell.

Inverallan expands Pellenc fleet

Inverallan expands Pellenc fleet

“We want to be the first landscape contractors that operate battery-only, so during the past three years we have been upgrading our tools and equipment to the equivalent battery models, as well as installing solar panels at our business unit,” he said.

The company first became acquainted with Pellenc equipment back in 2018 after purchasing a set of Helion 2 Compact hedge trimmers – the lightest battery-powered hedge trimmer on the market. After reporting excellent results, it continued to invest in Pellenc equipment and two years later, Inverallan Landscapes now boasts an impressive portfolio which includes chainsaws, blowers, hedge cutters, pole saws, road sweepers, grass strimmers and mowers.

The company’s most recent Pellenc additions were prompted after it was awarded a new contract in which a dedicated maintenance team would be working for a large housing association with over 1000 properties.

According to John, the zero-emission approach made total sense.

“To my knowledge this may well be the first maintenance team in Scotland to be 100% environmentally friendly so we are making huge strides. Not only will they solely be using the Pellenc equipment to maintain the houses and grounds, but they will also be using a brand-new Nissan E-NV200 electric powered van.

“It ticks every box – from the machinery point of view, the operator’s point of view and also from the residents’ point of view. There are just so many benefits from using the Pellenc equipment.”

Light, odourless, noise-free, with no starting problems and enough power to enable professional users to work for a full day on a single charge, it’s no wonder more and more professional users are turning to Pellenc. It is an attractive alternative to those who have, for a number of years, been relying on fuel-based machinery.

Not only will users see a huge amount of savings by eliminating the necessity of purchasing fuel but by using the Pellenc equipment, they will be contributing to protecting the environment by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and noise pollution.

“The team much prefer using the Pellenc equipment compared to the two-stroke products,” John continued. “It is far more lightweight, so they are less fatigued while working, there are no fumes and the equipment is so quiet. You particularly notice the benefits in those long, hot summer days.

“You also don’t have the issue of maintenance or parts going wrong in comparison to traditional two or four stroke equipment – such as spark plugs, air filters or oil changes. With the Pellenc equipment you just push a button and off you go.”

John saved particular praise for Rasion mower, claiming that it has enhanced the team’s grass cutting operations: “It’s a brilliant machine and it has more advantages than a traditional petrol mower. Firstly, it is so much lighter and from our point of view up here in Scotland, with the amount of rain we have, the ground can quite often be saturated. If you go onto that ground with a petrol mower, you are adding a lot of weight and you find yourself sinking into the ground. With the Rasion mower we have been able to get onto those saturated grounds and we have been able to tend to grass that we might not have previously been able to cut.”

“The other benefit is that it is wider than most petrol mowers, so we find ourselves cutting faster and covering more ground in a shorter amount of time.”

Inverallan Landscapes purchased the equipment from Agrovista Amenity in Stirling, and Allan Wright, amenity specialist for Agrovista, said: “It’s great to see that Inverallan Landscapes is revolutionising its approach to service provision through the introduction of battery-operated equipment.

“With Pellenc tools, there’s no compromise on performance, and users benefit from long-term cost savings, reduced noise and operator vibration.

“All Pellenc tools come with a three-year commercial warranty and batteries benefit from the new improved four-year commercial warranty. I believe the future is in the use of battery equipment and the new technological developments from Pellenc are certainly leading the way.”

Pellenc is exclusively distributed in the UK and Ireland by Etesia UK.

For further information, please contact Etesia UK on 01295 680120 or visit www.pellencuk.com

You can also follow Pellenc on Twitter and Instagram @PellencUK for much more news, reviews and insightful views.

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Miki Stengaard Petersen wins student award

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Miki Stengaard Petersen wins student award: Miki Stengaard Petersen has been named the Campey Turf Care Systems and Havdrup Student of the Year 2019.

The award is presented by the Groundsman Association Denmark (GAD) and is given to the student that finishes the Danish Groundsmen’s school with the highest grade in the final exam. In the event of two students getting the same grade, the decision is made based on the overall highest grade.

Miki Stengaard Petersen wins student award

Miki Stengaard Petersen wins student award

Miki works for Skive IK, who are into their second season in the Danish First Division after topping the Second Division and winning promotion in 2018/19. The 26-year-old has worked for the Jutland based club since April 2016 and works alongside three others at the 10,000 capacity Skive Stadium.

As well as winning the title of Student of the Year, Miki was also given the opportunity to travel to Spain and spend a week working Paul Burgess and his staff at Real Madrid CF. Miki has since spent a week in Madrid, and the experience has been one that will stay with him for the rest of his career.

“I almost didn’t believe it at first,” Miki began. “I was so happy and super excited, I’ve never won anything before, so to win the award and be given the opportunity to work with Real Madrid was huge for me.

“It was simply amazing; it was the experience of a lifetime. Paul Burgess and his staff are all very talented, and I feel that I learnt a lot from them. I’m very thankful for the experience because I’ve seen how beautiful our line of work can be.”

GAD was founded in December 2011 and aims to bring those interested in maintaining football fields and similar areas together. In doing this, they hope to use education, professional networking and educational tours abroad to strengthen the professional environment for groundsmen.

This has already included a visit to England in 2019 organised by GAD and Campey Turf Care where thirty-eight groundsman from Denmark and Spain visited leading venues such as Arsenal’s London Colney training centre, Liverpool Football Club, Stoke City Football Club, Tottenham Hotspur’s Enfield Training Ground and the brand-new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium where head of playing surfaces and estates, Darren Baldwin, gave up his time to give the group a tour of the stunning new facility and answer questions from the groundsmen.

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Andy Fogarty pitching in for Yorkshire

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Andy Fogarty pitching in for Yorkshire: Yorkshire may not have been consistently successful on the pitch in recent times but they have been consistently successful in producing good pitches.

The groundstaff led by head groundsman Andy Fogarty deliver day-in, day-out and have the accolades to prove it.

Andy Fogarty pitching in for Yorkshire

Andy Fogarty pitching in for Yorkshire

Indeed, the biggest thing in Fogarty’s house is probably his mantelpiece, not that the modest 57-year-old would ever blow his own trumpet.

ECB ‘Groundsman of the Year’ four times; runner-up four times; runner-up six times for his one-day pitches, plus numerous commendations.

In short, this is a guy who knows his stuff.

“It’s great for me and my team to get recognition,” says Fogarty, the current ECB ‘Groundsman of the Year’. “The lads all work really hard, and it’s a fabulous boost, a real shot-in-the-arm.”

Such recognition is no doubt sustaining Fogarty through his latest challenge – that of maintaining the Headingley ground with no cricket taking place or, indeed, any prospect of it doing so in the foreseeable future.

Fogarty is used to rain stopping play, bad light, hailstorms and even the dreaded ‘Beast from the East’ storm.

But Covid-19 is a different beast from the east altogether.

“Our brief is just to keep on top of the ground really,” he says. “Obviously, the grass still grows and needs cutting, and we don’t want to leave it any length of time because it just makes the job ten times more difficult.

“We’re doing a lot of watering and irrigation in the warm weather, and we’d already done a lot of pre-season work anyway, pre-season rolling, and so on.

“But this situation is certainly alien to us. We’ve never encountered anything like it before. No-one has.”

Fogarty is one of four members of Yorkshire’s groundstaff still working along with Gareth Milthorpe at Headingley, Richard Robinson at Weetwood and Nasa Hussain at Bradford Park Avenue.

“Between the four of us, we’re looking after the three sites,” says Fogarty. “God forbid, if anything happens to any of us, we can call in the other four lads who are off at the moment on the furlough scheme.”

In addition to furloughing their playing staff and all coaches apart from director of cricket Martyn Moxon, Yorkshire have furloughed most of their non-playing staff, too.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which pays 80 per cent of an employee’s salary up to £2,500 per month, has been a lifeline for many businesses, and Yorkshire estimate it will save £60,000-£70,000 a month on players’ salaries.

As yet, it is unclear when cricket will resume, under what conditions (behind closed doors or otherwise) and in what form (ie, what competitions will be played).

Who knows, Fogarty might even find himself preparing pitches for games in October, with talk of the season possibly being extended beyond September.

Not that this would be a problem for a consummate professional; indeed, were prizes awarded for dedication as well as ability, Fogarty would need an even bigger mantelpiece.

Groundstaff work crazy hours at times and are first to the ground in the morning, last to leave at night.

“The hours can be tough,” says Fogarty. “It’s why it can be difficult to recruit new staff into the industry; a lot of younger people are put off by the pay at the start and also by the hours that they have to put in.

“We generally start at 6.30am for a Championship game, and the play can finish at 6.30/7pm in the evening.

“Then we’ve got to cover up everything after that, do any watering and repair work, and we also cut the outfield as we’d rather do that in the evening than early morning when there’s dew or dampness around.”

Fogarty lives not far from Headingley and gets up at around 5.45am for his 6.30am start. Some members of his team live as far out as Huddersfield and Ilkley, though, meaning that they have to get up at around the same time as any self-respecting journalist is just getting in from a night on the town (pre lockdown era, of course).

Floodlit fixtures and the various demands posed by cricket’s different competitions make the groundstaff’s job ever tougher these days and the hours even longer. Such demands are heightened, of course, when a Test match is on.

“That’s your biggest game of the season, obviously, and you want everything to be right,” says Fogarty. “We can be here at 3am sometimes, checking things over.

“If it’s blowing a gale and it’s absolutely torrential rain, I can’t just lay in bed at home and listen to it all going off outside.

“I just have to nip down to the ground and make sure that everything’s fine, make sure the covers are still in place, make sure the drainage is working okay, and so on.

“The last thing I want is to nip into the office on the day of a Test match against the Australians and say to (chief executive) Mark Arthur, ‘Mark, we’ve got a problem. The covers blew off in the middle of the night.’ Can you imagine that? I can’t do that. I’d rather put my mind at ease and pop down to the ground.

“But that’s not unusual; I’m not the only one who does that. Every groundsman who looks after a county ground in the country would do the same.

“That’s why, years ago, a lot of groundsmen used to live on the grounds. We want everything to be right, and it’s just that peace of mind.”

There was no prouder man than Fogarty – and no more appreciative one than Arthur – when everything went like clockwork at last year’s Headingley Test.

After Fogarty worked his magic with the pitch, Ben Stokes worked his magic on it, and the rest was history as England recorded a one-wicket victory for the ages.

“You’re not going to see a finish to a Test match like that for a long time,” says Fogarty. “It was unbelievable, and I was so proud for everyone involved with the club.

“It was a tremendous year, what with the Ashes, four World Cup matches and a one-day international against Pakistan. We were lucky with the weather, and everything seemed to go smoothly; we didn’t have any problems.”

Ah yes, the weather…

The perennial bugbear of groundsmen everywhere.

“It can be really frustrating,” says Fogarty. “You’ve done all the hard work getting what you hope is a wonderful pitch ready, the outfield looks pristine and everything’s in place, and, blow me, half-an-hour before the start, the heavens open. It just frustrates the groundstaff, the players, the spectators, everyone.

“Thankfully, the radar systems that we have now are superb and can pick up the slightest shower that’s heading our way. We know what to expect, when to expect it, how long it’s going to last for and practically how much rain is going to drop, too.

“In the past, it was just play-it-by-ear really and look up at the sky.”

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Greenkeeping during a pandemic

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Greenkeeping during a pandemic: As clubs continue to be shut in the UK while the coronavirus pandemic holds its grip over the world, one of the biggest concerns looking ahead is the shape our courses will be in when normality returns.

In the wake of the lockdown, the government confirmed greenkeepers could still attend work for “essential maintenance purposes”.

Greenkeeping during a pandemic

Greenkeeping during a pandemic

BIGGA and the R&A then set out a comprehensive plan on what that should look like.

But what is being done in practice?

Nairn Dunbar, in the North of Scotland, will co-host the Amateur Championship next year. We caught up with course manager Richard Johnstone to ask him how his team were working during the outbreak and how the coronavirus lockdown and aftermath would affect the Highland course…

What is essential maintenance looking like at Nairn Dunbar?

The health, well-being and safety of our staff, members and visitors is priority so, for now, all staff are on three weeks furlough.

We are lucky there is very little growth until mid-April in the North of Scotland and are happy with course conditions after completing a lot of work during our winter maintenance programme.

I have been in constant contact with my Club Manager and Management Committee to plan the next steps needed to implement essential maintenance, starting mid-April.

How will staffing numbers continue to be affected?

We recently had our Deputy Course Manager retire after 27 years working on the course.

An internal promotion is being carried out, giving the opportunity to one of our highly skilled assistant greenkeepers who have been excelling in their role and are ready for a new challenge.

Due to new financial restraints caused by Covid-19 we will be unable to take on anyone new, meaning we will be running with five staff through 2020 to look after our 135-acre site.

How will the course react to the new regime and how much time would you need to reinstate it when the restrictions come to an end?

Having missed out on three weeks of work, tasks will be prioritised to ensure the main surfaces are in the best possible condition given the resources available.

It will be tough but our hard-working team will do our best to ensure members and guests can continue to enjoy a first class experience.

Our enthusiastic members will also be offered the opportunity to volunteer alongside our team on the course, which will really help us complete smaller tasks through 2020.

We will also be working closely with the STRI and R&A as we look at best practice ahead of hosting The Amateur Championship, alongside Nairn GC, in 2021.

What measures will you need to take to ensure everyone stays safe?

Prior to the lockdown we had already put measures in place to make sure staff and members were as safe as possible by implementing practises such as different shift patterns to avoid similar start/finish and break times, machinery and surfaces wiped before and after use.

We also have a lone working policy in place to ensure safe working practices are followed at all times.

Golfers were asked to follow guidelines, such as 2m distancing between players, not to touch pins and hole cups were turned upside down to avoid contact with the pin.

All bins, water fountains, ball washers were stopped from use and rakes and ball scoops were removed from the course totally.

A lot of these measures will almost certainly still be in use when the course opens again until we can return to some sort of “normality”.

Being such a close-knit community club during this tough period has been a big advantage and we hope we can work through this together coming out the other side even stronger.

We do encourage, if financially possible, members and guests continue to support us and invest in the future of our 121-year-old club.

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