FLAGSHIP FORTUNES
By Julien Morris Regional pitch advisor
It’s smiles all round at the Nene Valley Community Centre in Northamptonshire after a successful collaboration to improve the pitches at a flagship football venue
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aunched in October 2016, the Peterborough Football and Sports Development Foundation has enjoyed a developing partnership with Northamptonshire County FA and the Grounds and Natural Turf Improvement Programme (GaNTIP) that has led to great improvements in pitch quality at the foundation’s flagship venue – the Nene Valley Community Centre in Northamptonshire. Sited on the banks of the River Nene, the community centre is a jewel in the crown of local sports provision and the five-acre site is home to seven local clubs. When the site was first visited in January 2017 as part of the FA’s Pitch Improvement Programme, the pitches were unfit for use. They suffered shallow rooting and games were regularly cancelled due to waterlogging.
As a result of local authority cuts, pitch maintenance was transferred to the foundation in April 2017 – and the result has been a drastic turnaround in pitch quality and playability. Using cross-county collaboration, the foundation has been able to access the services of The FA’s Cambridgeshire & Huntingdonshire equipment bank. Following recommendations, the pitches were deep spiked, had an application of sand and were disc seeded with perennial ryegrass at the end of the 2017 season. Since then, further recommendations have been followed, and bi-annual applications of slow-release fertiliser have been introduced, as well as spraying of weeds and a further four cycles of deep aeration. All this has been possible due to the foundation’s policy of reinvesting all of the revenue from the hire of the grass pitches.
“The quality of coverage on the pitches is amazing” Using partnership funding from the Football Foundation, the site has been able to purchase a rear-roller mower and a combination of turf-grooming attachments to add to a modest fleet of machinery. Combined with another cycle of end-ofseason renovations in April 2018, it has led to an improvement in pitch quality standards, from ‘lower basic’ at the initial visit, to ‘high’ following a visit in July 2018. This successful collaboration has made some users very happy, and Stuart Clark, chairman of Orton Rangers FC, says: “The quality of the grass and the coverage on the pitches is amazing. All of our teams – adults and juniors – constantly comment on how good they are.”
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Visit www.iog.org for more information on GaNTIP
The pitches have been transformed
50 THE GROUNDSMAN January 2019