Putting a plan in place

Scott MacCallum catches up with George Mills, of Bedford School, who has spent the last two years implementing a plan to make the grounds as good as they could possibly be.

George Mills took over as Head of Grounds at Bedford School a couple of years ago at a very good time.

The school had just made a conscious decision to refocus on their sporting provision and to put the resources in place to enhance what had always been a key element of the school.

At his interview the school agreed that money would be invested in bringing the facilities back to a level which had seen the talents nurtured of such figures as 1924 Olympic 100 metres Champion – and Chariots of Fire star – Harold Abrahams, and England Cricket Captain, and record runs and 100s maker, Sir Alistair Cook.

In addition, from rugby former pupils include Martin Bayfield and two current England internationalists, George Furbank and Fraser Dingwall. Emilio Gay has also just broken into the England Test cricket team. It is quite a legacy.

“When I walked around the site, I could see areas where we could make some tweaks,” admitted George, who added that he had found some wicket mowers which were older than him.

At his interview, George discovered that the school wanted to put a long term plan in place for their sport provision to ensure that their place as the premier private school in the area was maintained.

“They’ve been absolutely superb because, since the day I came in, they’ve been true to their word and backed me with equipment and funding for projects,” said George, who had an unfortunate start to his Bedford career, when clipped his knee with a hedge trimmer, taking him off his feet for a period.

But for every cloud there is a silver lining, and it proved to be an accident which brought some benefits.

“It actually gave me time to sit down and assess the equipment we had, and I wrote up a long-term procurement plan for the site. It ended up being a real positive because we ended up getting a big influx of equipment straight away off the back of it.”

So, what was top of his to-do list once George and his team got going?

“We started to do more work inhouse. Previously they would bring in a contractor twice a year to spray for weeds and it was done to the contractor’s schedule rather than the optimum time for it to be done.

“We moved it in-house and having targeted sprays at times when they would be most effective. I was also putting in some nitrogen and some pH buffers to make sure the pH level was correct. So, we got the best possible strike rate.”

Remaining on that to-do list, but creeping nearer the top, is the first team rugby pitch which currently has a 40 mil thatch layer.

“The plan is to remove that 40 mil, stone bury the next three to four inches, integrate 300-400 tonnes of sand and level it all off. We’ll then create a sort of homogenous pitch that’s not too different from the native soil.”

George also found issues with the drainage on the predominately heavy clay site.

“My view is that drainage that had been put in had been overspeced. It’s great in the winter, but when we get into April the pitches would suffer.

“We’ve got 80 mil drains at three metre spacings and we can’t retain moisture during dry spells,” said George, who is working out how best to move to six metre spacing in the future.

The irrigation issue has already been addressed.

“When I started, we had three main water points dotted around the field which had around one bar of pressure each. It just wasn’t fit for purpose.

“We’ve installed over a 1,000 metres of irrigation pipe; installed a borehole; a couple of tanks and pumps.

“All of the cricket squares now have pop up irrigation, and the first team rugby pitch this year also has had pop up irrigation. The whole system has been designed so we can keep adding to it.”

The idiosyncracies of the site don’t end there.

“When I started the first team rugby pitch had a cricket square in the middle of it. It was literally on the 22 metre line at one end.

“In the winter, it would flood and they’d have games called off, or they’d resort to having to move the scrums across the pitch because of the potential damage to the square,” he explained.

Fitting sufficient pitches into a finite piece of land and doing so in the most efficient manner was another brain teaser.

“One of our biggest projects was last summer when we installed three new cricket squares and reconfigured the entire field.

“We moved every rugby pitch at least a few metres and adjusted the angles of the first and second team cricket square. We also had a third cricket square to one side of the site.

“This was a major team effort and it took us ages to come up with a plan of how we could end up with more cricket squares and better quality rugby pitches by reconfiguring such a finite amount of space.”

The new configuration was introduced in August last year and played this year.

“We’ve had really positive feedback on how they played this year,” said George, who added that the new layout is much easier on the eye with the striping all going in the same direction and avoiding strange angles.

There was also one thing that had niggled George from the day he had walked onto the grounds. There was something about that first team rugby pitch which didn’t quite seem right.

“It came to a head when I watched the guys erecting the 13 metre steel rugby posts at the beginning of the season. They were old fashioned posts and for health and safety reasons I decided that we should have hinged posts that could be erected in a much safer manner.”

So new hinged posts were purchased for every pitch.

“The posts had been in place for an extremely long time, and replaced in 2022, but when we were reconfiguring the field in 2025 we noticed that the first team pitch was off – wider on one side than it was on the other.

“So, when we went to the hinged posts we took the opportunity to rebalance the pitch,” said George, adding that it was one of those things that once you’d seen you couldn’t un-see.

With rugby mandatory at Bedford School and such a big roll coupled with a small site, George and the team also have their work cut out when it comes to preparing and repairing pitches throughout both the rugby and cricket seasons. Football provision has been enhanced in recent times too. There are also two full sized astroturf hockey pitches.

“We can go from 10 fixtures in quieter times to over 30 a week at our peak. It means that turnaround time for pitch preparation can be extremely tight.

“We go straight into renovating the cricket squares, which we now do in-house, then, after that, we’ll go into setting up all of the rugby pitches. It turns around pretty quickly.

For George groundsmanship is very much in the blood.

“My father, Bob, is a groundsman. He has spent the last 11 years at the Royal Artillery Company, in London, and is retiring later this year, while my brother is also a groundsman at the Odney Club, in Reading.

“I love it and can’t imagine ever doing anything else. I used to be told off at school for not doing my homework. I remember once, when I was 12 years old, leaving school, walking up to the football club at Bishop’s Stortford, and cutting the pitch with a G860 for a West Ham reserve game in the evening. That’s why I hadn’t done my homework.”

He is also delighted to be at a place where there is so much variety.

“A school is a bit of a Swiss Army knife. I think that’s the coolest bit.

Particularly somewhere like Bedford where we’ve got so many historic issues. We need to resolve so many different issues for some many different sports with such short turnaround windows.

“The hardest bit of the job is to accept when the field doesn’t look nice. I hate July and August because you spend all year trying to make it as good as you can and then you just watch it die.

“Then off you go again in September and they’ll be playing rugby six days a week.”

There are five in the Grounds Team including George. There is his Deputy James Griffin, who arrived last year from a golf background, Andrew “Moose” Brightman, Glenn Denny and Anthony Maylor. There is also a Gardens Department team of three.

Between the five members of the Grounds Team there is around 90 years of industry experience, a bank of knowledge and experience that would be hard to replicate at many other schools.

Indeed, George himself completed the GMA Level 5 Technical and Sports Turf Management qualification before he joined the school.

“One of the biggest successes has been the development of a more multiskilled team. They tackle far more of the servicing, repairs and machinery set-up in-house than before, which helps to build knowledge and reduce reliance on external support,” explained George.

“I have told the school that I think it’s incredibly rare to find a team of five with that much quality. Within the next year, we’re going to have our least qualified member of staff, either someone with 20 years’ experience, or someone with seven or eight years’ experience and a Level Three qualification.”

George is also quick to recognise the support that he has had from Charlie Seager, at Agrovista, and Duncan Toon, Head of Grounds at nearby Warwick School, who have both been generous and quick with their advice.

Likewise, companies such as JK Irrigation and Elite Sports Turf have worked closely with the in-house team on the major projects.

“Rather than simply carrying out their work and leaving they have involved our team throughout the process giving us valuable learning experiences.”

Having achieved so much in the first two years, George has prepared his line managers for the fact that such a rate of progress can only slow.

“I’ve said to my boss that we’ve probably made a 30% improvement over those two years. Going forward that will reduce and we might see 5% and then 2%. Beyond that, it’s about what finances can be provided to make further advances,” said George, who is realistic enough to appreciate that external financial pressures inevitably play a role in how quickly projects can be delivered.

“But we are continuing to make steady progress with our long term plans.

George is not someone who looks back, but if he were to, he’d appreciate just far he and the team have come over the past two years.

Looking forward can only be exciting for all concerned. Perhaps they will have facilities fit for Britain’s next Olympic sprint champion, or another record breaking cricketer.