Vandals Set Fire To Football Pitch

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Vandals Set Fire To Football Pitch: A Renton football team have been left with nowhere to play their games after vandals set fire to their pitch.

Players and coaches at Renton Craigandro have been left gutted by the damage done to their pitches at Tontine Park.

The grass pitch has been left blackened and unplayable with remains of melted plastic bins ruining the grounds.

The community club– which coaches 270 young players – will now have to foot the bill for the burnt out pitch and fix the damage by themselves over the festive period.

Matches which were set to be played this weekend will also have to be moved, costing the club even more money as they will have to pay to rent other pitches in the area.

One of the club’s coaches, Joe Mulvenna, was passing the club’s premises on Sunday night (December 9) when he spotted the burning bins.

Nearby residents called emergency services who attended to extinguish the blaze at around 7pm.

The fire was contained to the bins and caused no further damage to the pavillion on the park.

However, the fire has left blacked charred rubbish which will need to be cleaned up by the football team.

The grass will also have to be turfed at the expense of Renton Craigandro, who took over the pitch on a 25-year lease from West Dunbartonshire Council last year.

Club coach Joe said: “We were very lucky as it could have been so much worse.

“People panicked as they thought the whole place was on fire but thankfully it wasn’t that bad. It’s just so disappointing that someone would do that.

“We are now going to have to foot the bill for the damage and we don’t know yet how much it is going to cost.

“It is just an inconvenience for us all as we are going to have to put the time in to repair it and we now have to try and find another place for our teams to place while the pitch isn’t usable.”

A SFRS spokeswoman said: “TheScottish Fire and Rescue Service was alerted at 7.07pm on Sunday, December 9 to reports of small fire in the open in the Renton area of West Dunbartonshire.

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Greenkeeper Celebrates 40 Years

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Greenkeeper Celebrates 40 Years: A special staff function took place at the Berry Bowling Club on Sunday, to celebrate Rodney (Rod) Armstrong’s 40 years of continuous employment as a greenkeeper at Bomaderry Bowling Club and in more recent years also covering Berry.

Rod started his apprenticeship at Bomaderry in 1978 under the highly respected greenkeeper Ron Sharpe who served the club from 1966 until he retired in 1989. During Rod’s 40 years he has seen and been involved in many changes implemented at Bomaderry. Changes of particular note include the construction of the elevated green which now carries Ron Sharpe’s name, the moving of the green on the Cambewarra Road side of the club to the northern side and more recently the maintenance of the Berry greens and liaison with Nowra Golf Club.

Greenkeeper Sets Up Mental Health Support Page

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Greenkeeper Sets Up Mental Health Support Page: The head greenkeeper of Hazel Grove Golf Club in Cheshire has set up a successful Facebook page that offers mental health support to greenkeepers in the industry.

Mike Davie created the page after observing “the increase of expectations of the golfer with increased personal abuse aimed at, and stress among, the greenkeeping community”.

He added that he’s known greenkeepers who have left the industry due to this, and therefore set up the page ‘Greenkeepers mental health support group’ earlier this year.

It already has more than 250 members.

“Mental health issues are more apparent nowadays as more seek medical help,” he said.

“Yet little support is offered from many golf clubs and duty of care is apparently not seen as a necessity.

“One of the problems is that clubs are run by well-meaning volunteers, which means when they need to discipline members for acts against the club’s staff, they don’t want a confrontation with their ‘friends‘ and would rather brush the matter under the table and resolve the issue by providing a polite pat on the head of the greenkeeper. This all creates a feeling of isolation within the industry.

“Any sign of acknowledging a problem by oneself is deemed as thought of being weak, so we tend to bottle it up, causing greater problems.

“In late 2017 I attended a stress awareness seminar by BIGGA at Sale Golf Club and realised that, by the number who had attended, and the fact that many are highly respected within the industry, we had a problem with mental welfare.

“I started a local support group in south Manchester for greenkeepers who wished to attend and talk out their problems. The realisation that we are not alone made a huge difference. The feedback I got was positive so the Facebook page was started in late July.

“This group does not always need people to comment but, as I have been told, the fact there is a page that can be accessed gives strength to someone feeling down.

“A big problem with our industry is that it is a high percentage negative industry. For example, you lie in bed listening to the rain, wondering how the course is affected. Will there be breakdowns, will all the staff turn up? The first thought of seeing a committee member is ‘what’s their complaint?’ and so on.

“These sites help to promote the fact we are not alone and in fact are a strong community we just need to tap in to, build bridges and connect more.

“In the long term I hope that the governing bodies will take on the challenge of promoting, supporting and giving help to the welfare of greenkeepers.”

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Greenkeeping Team Rewarded

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Greenkeeping Team Rewarded: The greenkeeping team at Golf At Goodwood has realised its ambition of gaining the coveted Golf Environment Organisation certification for its commitment to sustainability across both the Park and Downs courses.

GEO Certified® is the symbol of great golf environments worldwide, showing a facility has met a credible standard in sustainability across six areas.

To be eligible, the greenkeeping team had to submit an extensive application that evidenced work in nature, water, energy, supply chain, pollution control and community.

The team, led by sports turf and grounds general manager Phil Helmn, set out to achieve GEO certification knowing it would safeguard the environmental future of the courses and be of benefit to members, customers and the local community.

Independent verification led to the GEO concluding Golf At Goodwood should receive certification because of its “outstanding work to minimise impact on the environment through introduction of biomass heating, solar panels and enhanced monitoring on water consumption.

”It said: “The club has also undertaken numerous natural environment projects providing enhancements to habitat in line with the surveys and advice commissioned by the facility.”

The application took 12 months and involved the greenkeeping team working with different departments across the Goodwood Estate.

Russell Carr, deputy head greenkeeper on the Park course, was credited by Helmn as being the man to pull together the resources and information to submit the application to the GEO.

He said: “We’ve introduced a sustainability ethos into our thinking with regular team meetings and it has been great seeing each team member embrace it.”

Helmn was proud of the work his team had put in and said: “Work towards this certification started four and a half years ago.”

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Award For Rotherham Grounds Team

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Award For Rotherham Grounds Team: More than any footballer could ever hope to Rotherham United head groundsman Dave Fellowes covers every blade of grass, suggesting he can clock up 100 miles a week on the pitch at AESSEAL New York Stadium.

Up and down, across and back, up and down, across and back.

Dave Fellowes reckons he can clock up 100 miles a week on the pitch at AESSEAL New York Stadium as head groundsman of Rotherham United.

“There’s no such thing as an average week,” he says. “Everything changes depending on what’s going on at the stadium or up at the training ground. In the summer we can be cutting the grass anything up to eight times a week.”

Such dedication has earned him and his team yet another prestigious honour. Fellowes, New York assistant Mykel Parkin and Roundwood man with the mower Dave Burton have been named the Institute of Groundsmanship’s Grounds Team of the Year.

“It’s down to hard work. It’s a great joint effort,” Fellowes says. “I wouldn’t ask any of the lads to do a job I wouldn’t do. It’s not one individual.

“It’s just old-fashioned hard work, looking at the elements and reacting in the right way to that with the tools that you have.”

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