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NEWS
Bob Smith 1942-2019 OBITUARY
Remembering the achievements of a pioneering football groundsman
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roundscare stalwart Bob Smith served the IOG – and the industry – for more than half a century, including being chairman of the Derby Branch (which eventually merged with the Nottingham Branch to form the East Midlands Branch) for over 50 years. Here, Colin Hoskins revisits his interview with Bob in 2014, when he looked back on his time as head groundsman at Derby County FC and revealed how his actions then impacted many of today’s groundscare routines. When Bob Smith talked about his 16 years as head groundsman at Derby County’s Baseball ground, he reflected as much about how he enjoyed working with team manager Brian Clough as he did about his work in groundsmanship. Never mind the fact that he was the first groundsman to soil test on a regular basis, the first to use an automatic overseeder, the first to manage a sandfilled pitch and one with automatic pop-up sprinklers, and the first to sow a football pitch with pure ryegrass. Bob preferred to talk about his experiences under Cloughie: “Brian or ‘Boss’ as everyone called him, was a very generous person and he was concerned about everybody at the club – not just the players.” Bob joined the club when he was 24, having worked at a British Rail cricket ground
“When I joined Derby County in 1967, I was told I’d never be able to grow grass at the ground”
Bob was awarded the IOG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015
for two years and before that nine years at the Co-operative (nee CWS) nursery in Derby. “This was the largest nursery in the country and had extensive facilities for seed testing and plant trials plus a laboratory. Working in every department, I gained a vast amount of experience there both in terms of horticulture as well as groundscare as we were also charged with landscaping tasks as well as sports ground maintenance. We also provided advice for the care of playing surfaces. The CWS wanted me to go to college but I was so busy ‘out on the ground’ I never got around to that.” Within 12 months, the cricket ground was hosting lots of major competitions – for bowls as well as cricket – including allEngland finals, yet his tenure there came to an end after being ‘asked’ to use an inferior sand for dressing. “I would never lower my standards,” he says, “and the disagreement over the sand coincided with Derby County advertising for a groundsman.” He continues: “When I joined Derby County, in 1967, I was told that I’d never be able to grow grass at the ground. “Being next door to a foundry, the ‘earth’ was primarily sulphur and sand – and when I arrived the perennial sward, what there was of it, was overwhelmed by a knotweed. Also, the design of the stadium allowed very little wind on the pitch. The drainage was atrocious, too. In wet weather the pitch was a mass of mud, and I remember one Christmas when I viewed the pitch there was not one blade of grass there!” And who remembers Derby’s game against
Manchester City in 1977 when, because of the mud, Bob was televised painting in a penalty spot? “I used to test the soil at least every month to make up for any deficiencies. I also rejected the traditional overseeding practice of rotavating and seeding with a chain harrow. I thought it would be better to seed by hand and the pitch came up like a bowling green. Thereafter I used the Contravator overseeder (I was the first in the country to do so), a machine that created the slits/slots that the seed was dropped into.” The improvements with the playing surface were complemented by the team’s performances on the pitch, and under Brian Clough Derby County won the Second Division Championship in 1968/69 and three years later topped the First Division. “When we won the First Division I was told I could have a new pitch, though I said I didn’t want one. However, the club went ahead and installed a solid sand pitch. Pop-up sprinklers were also installed, the first in the country, and we sowed a pure ryegrass mix, again being the first in the country to do so. After leaving Derby County Bob established his own landscaping and sports ground maintenance company but he looked back on the Baseball Ground with fondness. “The work there was certainly a way of life. On match day it was not unusual for me to be at the ground at 4am, and at the start of my career there I was certainly multi-tasking – which on one occasion actually saw me delivering transfer papers to a player. And I don’t regret one minute of it.”
www.iog.org THE GROUNDSMAN 9