Tag Archive for: Match

Volunteers help get Wembley pitch match fit

Volunteers help get Wembley pitch match fit: Two volunteer groundskeepers were given the experience of a lifetime by helping prepare the world-famous Wembley pitch ahead of the Lionesses’ game against the Netherlands.

The Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation ran a competition as part of the Get Your Pitch Match Fit campaign that celebrates the importance of grass pitches and the groundskeepers who maintain them for the grassroots game.

Volunteers help get Wembley pitch match fit

Volunteers help get Wembley pitch match fit

Trevor Chenery and Tony Hesketh are volunteer groundskeepers at Halesworth Town Juniors FC in Suffolk and Acton Ealing Whistlers AFC in West London respectively. Between them, the Clubs have received over £129k in grant funding from the Foundation to get their pitches looking and playing their best.

Wembley Stadium’s Grounds Manager, Karl Standley, was on hand to offer expert advice, show them what’s involved in getting the hallowed turf match ready and help them put the finishing touches on England’s most prestigious pitch.

Trevor said: “Every football fan dreams of stepping out onto the Wembley pitch, so to be able to do that has been a dream come true.

“Groundskeeping is a real labour of love and today I’ve seen that it’s exactly the same for the top groundskeepers in the country. There’s so much I’ve learnt that’ll help me take my own pitch to the next level.

“I’d like to thank the Football Foundation for all the advice and funding I have received so far by using PitchPower and of course for the incredible opportunity today.”

The pair were selected at random from users of PitchPower – the Football Foundation’s free web app for inspecting and improving grass pitches.

Through PitchPower, anyone responsible for a grass pitch can inspect their pitches and receive bespoke advice from experts at the Grounds Management Association on how to improve them. After receiving these recommendations, PitchPower users have the opportunity to apply for grants of up to £12,800 per pitch through the Foundation to put them into action.

Tony said: Before using PitchPower, we regularly had to call off games because our pitches just couldn’t handle any form of bad weather.

“Now, not only are our fixtures able to go ahead as planned, but our players actually enjoy the games more because they get to play on quality playing surfaces. That transformation wouldn’t have been possible without PitchPower and the funding we received from the Football Foundation.

“Today has been great and I hope to take some of Karl’s advice back to our pitches at Acton Ealing Whistlers AFC to ensure all our players can enjoy their football!”

Karl Standley, Wembley Grounds Manager and Football Foundation Supporter, said: “Having a quality playing surface is vital, whether you’re playing in the World Cup final or Sunday League with your friends.

“The grassroots game couldn’t function without volunteer groundskeepers giving up their time for clubs across the country and I’m proud to help the Football Foundation shine a spotlight on the vital role they play.

“Thanks to the support of the Premier League, The FA and Government, the Foundation will be investing £21 million a year to get grass pitches across the country looking and playing their best.

“I’d encourage anyone responsible for a grass pitch to keep an eye out on the Foundation’s social channels for tips and tricks on how to maintain their grass pitches and sign up to PitchPower to start their grass pitch transformation journey.”

To help more people enjoy all the benefits of grassroots sport, the Foundation has set the target of reaching 20,000 ‘good’ quality grass pitches across the country by 2030.

For more information, head over to the Foundation’s website:

https://footballfoundation.org.uk/get-your-pitch-match-fit

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Rugby pitch damaged ahead of charity match

Rugby pitch damaged ahead of charity match: On the eve of a charity match on the Sportsground, mindless motorists took the opportunity to race around the town’s rugby pitch in the early hours of Friday April 15.

Read the full article from Monmouthshire Beacon here

Rugby pitch damaged ahead of charity match

Rugby pitch damaged ahead of charity match

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Guardiola names ‘men of the match’

Guardiola names ‘men of the match’: Pep Guardiola hailed his ‘brilliant’ players but felt the Etihad Stadium groundsmen were the real heroes of Manchester City’s victory over West Ham United.

Read the full article from TeamTalk here

Guardiola names 'men of the match'

Guardiola names ‘men of the match’

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Match Off After Pitch Vandalism

Match Off After Pitch Vandalism: Ongoing damage at Putaruru’s Totara Park is angering the community and sparking fears public access could be restricted.

In the latest incident a vehicle damaged the football pitch so badly that the Rangers team had to cancel its final game of the season.

Match Off After Pitch Vandalism

Manager Derek Roberts, who has been with the club since the 1960’s, said although not the first time vehicles have damaged the grounds, it was the worst he had seen.

South Waikato District Council parks and reserves manager Phil Parker said the damage was “frustrating”.

“Staff and contractors find this behaviour equally annoying as park users,” he said.

“Our staff and contractors work hard to maintain our parks, reserves and sports grounds for our community and to see them treated with such disrespect is very frustrating.”

Parker said prior to the latest incident the council’s contractor was due to begin the bi-annual turf renovation programme.

“This will continue, however, obviously, this part of the grounds will now require some additional work and effort,” he said.

He said the ongoing damage was costing ratepayers.

“Sadly this is not an isolated incident,” he said.

“There is a cost to ratepayers to repair this kind of damage which is unfortunate, but the greatest cost in this instance is that the Putaruru Rangers had to forfeit their last game of the season. That’s really disappointing.”

Parker said the council was disappointed that the actions of a few people were ruining things for the majority.

“Those responsible for this vandalism should be held to account. Unfortunately without eyewitnesses that is close to impossible,” he said.

“We would encourage anyone who knows anything to contact the council or the police.”

Senior Sergeant Jason Henderson said he wasn’t aware of any reports being made to police.

“We haven’t received any report as yet. That is quite often the thing, if we don’t know about it we can’t actually do anything about it,” he said.

“More often than not we find people don’t want to bug the police because we are already busy and all the rest of it but if there is a trend and it is annoying people then we need to know so we can look into it.”

Henderson said such incidents could lead to public access being restricted to such facilities.

“These people will end up ruining it for everyone,” he said.

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Kubota’s Perfect Match

Kubota’s Perfect Match: Boasting over 2000 pitches for touring, holiday and residential mobile homes across seven separate sites throughout the UK, Partingtons Holiday Parks is a nationwide leisure company that has firmly established itself as a popular household name, and is next year celebrating its 75th anniversary.

The successful business is overseen by the 4th generation of the Partington family. Robert Partington Kearsley and his sister Andrea Challis run the business and employ over 250 individuals as part of their ‘family first’ approach.

Kubota's Perfect Match

With six Visit England accredited holiday sites and one residential site in the Partingtons portfolio, it’s imperative that each park is kept in the best condition possible to ensure visitors continue to return year after year. This is a challenge Robert and Andrea’s grounds maintenance teams face on a daily basis and easily achieve through their longstanding relationship with high quality suppliers, working closely with Kubota and local dealer Dennis Barnfield over the last 15 years.

Currently boasting a 25 strong Kubota fleet, maintenance of the various sites is headed up by each individual park manager and their dedicated grounds maintenance teams.

Speaking of the partnership, Robert said: “With seven different parks to contend with, it’s vital that our grounds maintenance is consistent across the board to ensure we achieve the highest standard at every park. The service we receive from Dennis Barnfield and the varying models of quality Kubota machinery they provide, ensures each of the sites are kept in premium condition.”

From transporting seven tonne caravans across the park to mowing and mulching of the lawns, Kubota machinery plays an essential role in the running of the sites. The parks have been home to a multitude of machines over the years, with its current fleet including a number of G Series high dump mowers and F Series ride on mowers for regular grass cutting.

For the more heavy duty site work, two L Series compact utility tractors, four larger scale M6040 tractors and two L3200 tractors are used to help the maintenance teams move the holiday homes and complete essential upkeep. With such substantial loads to transport across the parks, the high performance tractors are the perfect solution for the task, safely and carefully helping the team to transport the caravans around the site.

The sites are also home to five recently acquired RTV-X1140’s. Robert continued: “We recently purchased the new RTVs because the option to have an additional two seats in the back or a larger cargo bed is useful for the team when transporting equipment around the vast sites. The RTV-X900 we previously purchased was so robust and resilient that I knew we needed more Kubota RTVs to help the maintenance team complete their tasks easier and quicker.

“Past generations of the Partington family has used Kubota machinery for decades based on the quality and reliability of the brand, as well as its first class aftersales services. Our confidence in the performance of the machines means that Andrea and I have one less thing to worry about as we know the maintenance of the sites will continue to run like clockwork.”

For more information on Kubota and its range of solutions for the groundcare sector, visit www.kubota.co.uk/groundcare or call 01844 268 000.

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Volunteers Assist Match Preparation

Volunteers Assist Match Preparation: A football club has been saved thousands of pounds by a number of community volunteers who have helped prepare a stadium for the biggest game in its history.

Highland League outfit Fraserburgh host Premiership giants Rangers at the weekend in the Scottish Cup.

Volunteers Assist Match Preparation

And ever since the draw was made, the town has caught cup fever.

Volunteers have been giving up their free time over the last few weeks to turn up at Bellslea Park every day and help get the ground in tip-top shape.

Finlay Noble, the club’s chairman, said: “It’s great. It’s good we’ve got that level of support.

“It’s all individuals helping to get the ground up to scratch for the game.

“We’re quite humbled really.

“We’ve got a core group of ground staff, and probably a dozen or so people. There’s one or two staff and the rest are volunteers.

“They’re sprucing the place up and putting in new standing areas, removing the grass and putting in more suitable standing area.

“They’ve sorted some of the barriers.”

Finlay said local painter Fred Bruce had been helping to give the grounds a splash of colour.

He added: “We’re very grateful we’ve got his support.”

Most of the hard work has now been done and the finishing touches are being put in place for the David versus Goliath encounter.

Finlay said the help and support from the community had been invaluable ahead of the game, and it would be difficult to put a price on it.

He said: “It would be embarrassing to try and work it out.

“The guys have been here on a daily basis for about three weeks.

“As far as the cost goes it probably runs into a couple of thousand pounds.

“If we paid them minimum wage it would probably be a couple of thousand. They’re supporters of the club so they’re feeling a sense of pride in helping out.”

Finlay added the local chip shop has been doing “a roaring trade” with the volunteers at lunchtime.

“Since the draw was made we quickly identified what we needed, we made a list of jobs and that’s been ticked off on a daily basis,” he said.

“It’s great. It’s warming to see that we’ve got that kind of support.

“We’re not a club that publicises ourselves and we just get on with it.

“Anything we get we really appreciate.

“It’s humbling that the club has that level of support when it’s needed.”

Bars and restaurants in the town have been expecting a boost in trade.

“And the eyes of the nation will be on the Broch come Sunday, with a capacity crowd and the game live on TV.

Finlay said: “Everybody’s excited, understandably.

“Rangers are a big, big club in world football, not just Scottish football.

“To have that level of competition and opposition at the Broch is great.

“It’s good to see the shops and local businesses getting involved and sending good luck messages.”

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