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World Class, without resting on their laurels

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Laurence Gale

World Class, without resting on their laurels Laurence Gale travels to Derby to see developments at Dennis and Sisis: It has been a couple of years since my last Dennis and SISIS factory visit and it’s always good to catch up to find out about any new developments and see what new products may be coming […]

Demain’s the name

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Scott MacCallum

Demain’s the name: When the name of the Professional Groundman of the Year was announced at the IOG Awards Dinner in November, there was one man in the huge function suite in the National Motor Cycle Museum, in Birmingham, not paying too much attention. Vic Demain, Head Groundsman at Durham County Cricket Club, in Chester-le-Street, was […]

World Class, without resting on their laurels

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Laurence Gale

Demain’s the name

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Scott MacCallum

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World Class, without resting on their laurels

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Laurence Gale

World Class, without resting on their laurels

Laurence Gale travels to Derby to see developments at Dennis and Sisis: It has been a couple of years since my last Dennis and SISIS factory visit and it’s always good to catch up to find out about any new developments and see what new products may be coming on to the market.

Like most proactive companies, R&D and product development are important in driving the company forward. It was at the recent IOG SALTEX show where we saw Dennis’ new PRO 34R rotary mower and a battery powered pedestrian rotary mower – and judging by those who saw them, it is safe to say that these products are highly anticipated. The rotary mower is a totally new concept for Dennis who, until now, have been renowned for producing their iconic range of cylinder mowers.

Our visit started with a very warm welcome by company owner, Ian Howard, whose vision has been instrumental in the success of the Dennis and SISIS brands. It was apparent that Ian “along with his vastly experienced senior management team” have ensured that the company is in more than capable hands.

In 2011, SISIS was acquired by Howardson to sit alongside Dennis as a division providing the groundcare industry with a truly comprehensive range of British manufactured products. This monumental acquisition signalled the start of a perfect partnership in which the two brands are now synonymous with world class turf care equipment.

Without resting on their laurels, the Howardson company continues to work hard on improving the value and versatility of both Dennis and SISIS products. In the last seven years their machines have continued to gain UK and global recognition and this is supported by the robust and dedicated sales/marketing and demonstration team.

The further acquisition of Crocodile Precision along with continued significant investment by All British Precision in the engineering process of the components, has further enhanced the company’s ability to produce a larger range of quality British made products more efficiently.

In recent years we have seen the Dennis/SISIS branded machinery being used at many of the top-flight sporting venues for football, cricket, rugby and bowls both home and abroad.

One of the main reasons for this has been due to the fact Dennis/SISIS has listened to its customers and have taken the opportunity to redesign and develop new products. Take, for example, the new PRO 34R rotary mower, which the team have been working on for over two years to bring to the market. This was a direct result from listening to the requirements of many of the world’s top groundsmen.

This new 34-inch-wide machine offers a powerful vacuum and cutting unit that helps present and clean up sports pitches. This machine has been on trial at several Premiership football clubs thus enabling the company to thoroughly test the machine and Iron out any potential problems.

As with most Dennis products they are built to last, with a proviso it needs to be able to guarantee at least five years of untroubled service working on the harshest of terrains. This new machine sits nicely with the G860 range of mowers, designed with many similarities in terms of hand controls, engine and chassis and comes with a good back up service and a reputation of Dennis reliability.

It was apparent that Dennis are also very up-beat about the other rotary mower waiting in the wings, which was first seen at 2017’s SALTEX show. Their new battery powered pedestrian mower gained a lot of interest. It certainly looked a robust, well designed innovative machine from the Dennis stable and they have been working with Bosch for a while to bring this mower to fruition.

The concept of Dennis moving into battery powered machinery is no doubt in their minds, especially in the way the industry is starting to embrace these new technologies. There will certainly be plenty of opportunities to ‘battery-fi’ many of their products in the coming years.

The company were happy to share their sales figures in terms of positive growth year on year since 2010, which is testament to all the hard work being done by all parts of the business.

The current sales figures are split 60% UK and 40% overseas with the company having 30 dealerships servicing and distributing products in the UK, coupled with a further 45 dealerships worldwide. Sales abroad are growing all the time and Dennis will, for the third successive year, be supplying many of the venues in this year’s World Cup in Russia.

The sales team is backed up by a field support/demo team and the combination of experienced field staff, backed up by technicians and the support of all the factory staff, together with a renewed marketing strategy led by Roger are the reasons why Howardson Ltd is growing a reputation of building quality British made products for the professional turfgrass industry.

It was then time for our tour of the factory, beginning with a visit of the metal fabrication and tooling areas which feature in the All British Precision department. The investment in robotic milling and tooling systems has reduced waste and speeded up production of key parts.

We then visited the new powder coating paint shop, a very clean and appropriate facility that enables the company to be in control of the quality and number of parts being painted.

Finally, we saw the assembly area, where staff concentrate on assembling and putting together a range of Dennis and SISIS products, multi-tasking and sharing job roles so they can be more flexible to meet customers’ orders.

Dennis/SISIS are very proud of their business and are keen to continue to serve the turf grass industry with investment. In recent years we have seen the popularity of their free seminar and education days grow. The annual cricket day which now attracts well over 200 groundsmen.

All in all, Dennis and SISIS have been very busy in the last seven years and are beginning to see the fruits of their labour.

I would like to thank Dennis/SISIS for the opportunity to visit and see first-hand the work they do behind the scenes to ensure Dennis and SISIS remain one of the leading British manufacturers in the turfcare industry.

Demain’s the name

February 28, 2018/in Turf Spotlight/by Scott MacCallum

Vic Demain, Head Groundsman at Durham County Cricket Club, in Chester-le-Street, was basking in the warm glow of success, having seen his team named Professional Cricket Grounds Team of the Year earlier in the evening and he had to be nudged to get on his feet to go collect the award.

“I looked to the stage and there was my name on the screen and my first thought was that this can’t be right, it has to be a mistake. But it slowly sunk in and I went up and collected the award,” recalled Vic.

To be fair to him his surprise had a degree of justification. A cricket groundsman had never won Professional Groundsman of the Year while, a mere six years before, Vic was a groundsman working in recreational cricket.

“My name is now engraved on the Cup alongside a host of legends in the world of groundmanship. Everyone on it is so deserving and I feel I shouldn’t be included among them, that I’m a bit of an imposter.

“That said it’s been absolutely brilliant. I still haven’t come down and I have to pinch myself that it’s happened,” said Vic, speaking to Turf Matters in his first interview since his success.

The story of how Vic came to join luminaries of the industry is remarkable and one which should provide inspiration to anyone who has been knocked back, got up, got knocked back again, yet still rose to the top of the tree.

He left school at 16 in Faringdon, located between Oxford and Swindon, and took up an apprenticeship at a local building company. Apprenticeship completed Vic launched his own business which he ran for 20 years until the housing market crashed in the mid-90s and his company folded.

“I’d always been a lover of cricket and was the sort of guy every club wants. I’d cut the grass, I’d do the fixtures, my wife would make the teas, I’d take coaching courses. Anything, so long as it was involved with cricket. On the field I wasn’t very good, but I was really keen and made the most of what limited ability I had. I just loved the game,” he explained.

Looking for employment, ideally in cricket, he applied for and eventually, at the second attempt, got the job of Cricket Manager on a private estate, where he learned rudimentary groundsmanship.

“I knew nothing about it whatsoever, and remember this was before the days of internet, so I got out and spoke to the old boys who were looking after their own grounds, and learned a lot from them.

“After about four or five years we got the ground up to Minor Counties’ standard and Buckinghamshire played there. It really was the best job in the world.”

Until the next set back.

“We had a change of management and the new manager decided that cricket was costing the Estate too much money and took the ground down the contractor route. I was made redundant.”

Next step was to Milton Keynes and Campbell Park working for a contractor but a yearning was growing for his own ground and when he saw an advert for a job at Uxbridge Cricket Club. He jumped at it and fortunately for Vic they jumped at him and it was there that he spent the next seven seasons as Head Groundsman, a ground where Middlesex played a number of games

Now this next bit is all-important for those of you feeling that life has passed you by and stretching out ahead is not so much a potential pathway to success, but a rut.

“It was the wet summer of 2012 and Nottinghamshire came down to play Middlesex. It never stopped raining, but we worked diligently and while we didn’t get a result in the end, we did manage to get quite a bit of play.”

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“At the end of the season Nottinghamshire were looking for a Deputy Head Groundsman and I thought, I’ve got no chance as I’d not worked at that level, but decided to throw my hat in the ring anyway. However, I’ve been told that when the Director of Cricket saw the applications and noticed the Uxbridge connection he said, ‘That’s the guy I want because when we went to Uxbridge they worked so hard to get the game on’,” said Vic.

It’s a lesson for everyone.

“I try to impress upon people that if you work hard, put in the graft, don’t hide in the shed when conditions are bad, and always been seen to be doing your best, someone may notice you. That’s exactly what happened to me.

“Honestly, I was about 50 at the time and was beginning to think that it was time to start winding down a little, but my career has really taken off in the last five years. Look whats happened to me, these last five years have just been crazy. You couldn’t plan for it.”

The final piece in the career jigsaw came in 2015 when he applied for the vacancy at Durham.

“I guess I’m one of those people who always wants to test themselves and I wanted to work at the highest possible level and for me, at Durham, the biggest attraction of all was that I knew in 2016 there was going to be a Test Match. There are not many Test Grounds and not many people who have done a Test Match so for me that was huge.”

But Durham wasn’t a job for the feint hearted. The pitch was well known to be damp and bowler friendly. Also the club was experiencing financial difficulties, brought about by the contractual obligation when Durham became the latest addition to the County Championship in 1992 that the Riverside be developed as a Test and International venue. This is a part of the country not regarded as a cricketing hotspot.

“I started in March 2015 which was too late to do anything with the pitches. When I arrived I was concerned about the poor grass coverage on the pitches. We are lucky that we have a big square but five or six of those pitches were not going to be usable until July.

“The other issue I faced was that, for me, Nottingham had been the furthest I’d been north. I’d been used to working around the London areas which has a completely different climate. My pitch at Uxbridge was probably the most batsman-friendly you’d ever see so, in order to get the bowlers interested, I’d leave 10-12 mm of grass on each pitch.

“I tried to do that at Durham in my first season but the ball was going around corners and the batsmen were not happy at all. The one thing about that season was that the cricket was hugely entertaining for the person buying a ticket. No game ended in two days, but we had a lot of three day games and every game we played ended in a result.”

It wasn’t until the end of that first season that Vic finally got a handle of the pitch, and not before he sought the sage-like advice of the very man who would know.

“I couldn’t fathom out how pitches always seemed to be a on the damp side despite me trying to dry them out. All I could come up with was that water was coming up from underneath the surface. So what I did was track down Tom Flintoft, Head Groundsman here 30 years ago. He’s a lovely guy and I’ve spoken to him a lot since. I asked him if there was chance that my theory was correct and straight away he said to me that there was more water under the square than there was in the River Wear!”

Knowing the issue and resolving the issue are two completely different things however.

“In the short term there is really nothing you can do outside of digging up the pitch and putting in a membrane to prevent the water reaching the wicket but with our financial constraints that wasn’t going to happen.” Vic’s appreciation of what he was dealing with coincided with an instruction from the ECB to all Head Groundsmen that pitches should be more spinner friendly and the change to the toss rule which gave visiting Captains the option of bowling first.

“With the history at Durham no-one was ever going to say they were going to bat first so our pitches simply had to change. What I did was shave all the grass off and got them to be flat, white and reasonably hard so, after a game or two, we actually did see the away team wanting to bat first. The bowlers weren’t too happy and maybe it wasn’t as exciting cricket for the paying public. Perhaps there is still some middle ground to be had,” said Vic, who did become a hero to Keaton Jennings, who based on the amount of runs he has scored on Vic’s pitches, has since opened the batting for England.

Oh, that Test match and the reason Vic took that leap of faith north.

It was against Sri Lanka in May 2016 and to be honest that leap of faith Vic took in moving north looked decidedly misplaced when the week before a Sri Lankan team, shorn of its legendary batters and bowlers who had retired, were twice skittled out cheaply at Headingley in a match which barely lasted three days.

“People were saying that on our traditionally bowler friendly pitch that it could all be over in two days, but luckily England won the toss and batted, putting on over 400. Then having added to the run of low scores and being forced to follow-on the Sri Lanka’s showed some real mettle and batted well to overtake England’s first innings total and the match went into a fourth day.

“It was a reasonably good Test and all the reports were positive, but it was cold, mid-May, the weather wasn’t great and crowds weren’t huge.”

It tended to sum up the plight of Durham.

At the end of 2016 the financial problems came home to roost. Despite finishing fourth in the First Division Durham were relegated for financial reason and, to really kick them when they were down, they started each competition of the 2017 season on minus points.

The Board was removed and a new one put in place led by Chairman Sir Ian Botham, who has used his profile and contacts within the game to pull Durham through these immensely difficult times.

“A lot of people were very concerned about their jobs. My staff were worried, we were all worried and it was one thing after another – bad news after bad news after bad news – so, 12 months later, to be able to take these two wonderful awards back to the club was just fantastic.

“We knew that we were up for Headland Amenity Professional Cricket Grounds Team of the Year. We’d been short-listed along with Hampshire, as we had been the previous year when we lost out to Essex, so I was hopeful that we might have a chance. I was hugely delighted when we won not just for my team but for Team Durham back at the club – all the staff.

“It was brilliant for my small team – my Deputy Mark Patterson who has been at the club for over 15 years; Ben Hall, who has been here for eight years and for Amy McKewan, who is in her second season here and doing her apprenticeship. My coming in just three years ago was difficult for us all. I was joining a team which was already established and for Mark and Ben they had only ever worked for one boss and become used to doing things one way. I was never going to be the same and change is difficult to deal with, particularly with the wider issues going on.

“But three years on we’ve got there and our Award is a rubber stamping and recognition for what we have achieved. I think part of the reason we got the award was our ability to produce what we have done under financial constraints.”

An hour listening to Vic and you can fully understand why he also picked up the Ransomes/DLF Johnsons Alex R. Miller Groundsman of the Year award. His enthusiasm and drive are infectious and he possesses a can-do attitude which has survived through a number of career disappointments.

Five years on from the last of those disappointments, and a time when he was considering looking for a job to ease himself into retirement, he sits alongside the very best groundsmen that this country has produced.

Whether he believes it or not, he fully deserves that honour.

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World Class, without resting on their laurels

Demain’s the name

World Class, without resting on their laurels

Demain’s the name

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

World Class, without resting on their laurels

Demain’s the name

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