By Phil Jeggo Regional pitch advisor
YARMOUTH’S GREAT AGAIN A joint programme with the Norfolk County FA, the Grounds and Natural Turf Improvement Programme (GaNTIP) and the local borough council has brought vast improvements to Great Yarmouth Town’s stadium surface
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reat Yarmouth Town Football Club was formed in 1897 and the team still plays at the same Wellesley Road stadium ground as it did all those years ago, nowadays staging Eastern Counties Premier Division matches. The ground is owned by Great Yarmouth Borough Council and the pitch is maintained by the authority’s contractor, Great Yarmouth Borough Services. There was an initial Pitch Improvement Programme (PIP) visit in November 2016, then my involvement as a regional pitch advisor started when I visited a year later. As result of the visit I made recommendations that included, as part of the end-of-season renovations: Decompaction Overseeding via a disc seeder Minimum 60 tonnes of 70/30 topdressing The instigation of a fertiliser programme. All recommendations were carried out in early May 2018. However, complicating
The dry 2018 summer a�ected t e reno ations
The Wellesley Road pitch is looking better than ever
“The biggest challenge now is to sustain this in the future” matters, an athletics track surrounds the pitch and is used by schools from May to July – a period that, last year, coincided with one of the hottest and driest summers on record. The result was little and poor germination so the recommended actions (excluding topdressing) had to be repeated mid-July to give the pitch every chance of being ready for the new season. Irrigation was applied 24/7. The club was persuaded to cancel its scheduled home games in early August for the long-term benefit of the surface, to give the pitch at least five weeks to reestablish. The first home game took place during the first week of September. We offered further support to the club in the
form of a general maintenance plan for the upcoming season, which the council instigated. Today, the club has received very positive feedback and the pitch is now in the best condition it has been for years. Social media comments posted ahead of the opening league game were positive: “Wellesley looking the best it has looked for many a year”; “That looks amazing – best I’ve seen it since I started following the Bloaters in 1966”; “Pitch looks fantastic”. Working together, the club, the Grounds and Natural Turf Improvement Programme, Norfolk County FA and Great Yarmouth Borough Council – which has also signed up four additional sites to the PIP – are jointly responsible for this achievement. The biggest challenge now is to sustain this in the future. Visit www.iog.org for more details about the Grounds and Natural Turf Improvement Programme
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www.iog.org THE GROUNDSMAN 15