COMMUNITY RUGBY
Aerial view of the club’s Steel Cross site
Crowborough RFC’s Friday Club of volunteers includes, from left, Bob Gregory, Sean Beamish, Graeme Pratt, Lawrence Crowley, Simon Davies, John Ricketts, John Sayer, Ken Roberts, John Wilmshurst, Rick Howe, Eddie Bridges, Graham Callard, Max Martyn
BEST PRACTICE
SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT Thanks to the award-winning efforts of a band of enthusiastic volunteers, the playing surfaces at Crowborough Rugby Football Club have been transformed
C By Colin Hoskins Features editor
rowborough Rugby Football Club can boast that Dylan Hartley, co-captain of the England Rugby Union team, is a former player, but until recent years it couldn’t shout as loudly about the state of its pitches. It’s a different story now, and the club regularly hears that “the pitches have never looked so good, rather than being renowned for being the worst in the area”. The recent groundscare success of the volunteers at the East Sussex club is realised in the infectious enthusiasm and camaraderie when they meet at the ground. It’s apparent, even on a damp and dull December day, as they put the final touches to the pitches in preparation for the weekend’s games. “There is always a lot of banter and we do have a laugh and joke every time we get together, but at the heart of what we all do is the desire to ensure that every pitch is prepared to the best of our ability,” says facilities manager John Sayer. It was John, himself a volunteer, who launched the Friday Club of groundscare volunteers – so-
called because Friday is the main day of the week when the team congregates at the Steel Cross site to ready the pitches for The Crows’ weekend games (senior men’s teams on Saturdays and mini and juniors on Sundays). The club is fortunate in that it owns its own grounds and clubhouse – just over 16 acres, with four full-size pitches and two training areas. “The Friday Club started after we had built a new clubhouse in 2011 and I realised that the rest of the estate was looking shabby in comparison – and that included the pitches, which were not being maintained correctly,” says John. “They were simply being mowed (irregularly) and line marked. There was no feeding or weedkilling treatments, and no overseeding or renovations. The idea was to establish a volunteer group to assist our untrained part-time groundsman, Drew Pratt, with mowing, pitch marking, watering, surface renovations and unskilled machine maintenance. “Initially, I went on a Lantra one-day course on Winter Sports Turf and subsequently attended supplier-led roadshows to gain www.iog.org THE GROUNDSMAN 13