Operations to complete in August:
- Share your expertise with other volunteers
Share your grass pitch maintenance knowledge with players, club officers, coaches, parents and outside parties so everyone understands how to keep the pitches in good condition.
Attend club meetings, send emails or have a chat with everyone at the club about your top tips on how to get the pitch match fit. Keep your points simple, avoid getting into the technical aspects of maintaining the pitch, and use analogies to help to get your point across. A couple of examples might be;
- If a team is constantly training and playing games without any chance for recovery they’ll break down and not be able to perform at their peak; the same is true of a pitch. A balance has to be struck to keep pitches in a fit state so rotate playing areas and lighten the load of high-use zones.
- If a team is training and playing games whilst not eating and drinking enough or fuelling themselves with the right things they will perform poorly or get injured; the same can be true of grass. Especially under the stress of games and training, grass needs adequate fertilisation to perform at its best.
- Move training around
Communicate as soon as you can if certain areas of pitches would benefit from a rest.
If you have an off-pitch area that is used for training, mark some grids with 5m and 15m lines on it so that line out practice and scrums can be practiced there.
3. Simple record keeping
For all of us and especially volunteers, time is at a premium so here’s some tips to speed up your admin work. Simple record keeping can save plenty of time in the long run and can prove very useful as the season progresses.
- Keeping a record of pitch use can be extremely useful.
- A simple maintenance log can also help you out a lot. This is especially handy for recording less frequent tasks, such as aeration, decompaction and fertilisation, and making year on year comparisons to see what has worked well and what hasn’t.
- With England’s notoriously damp summers, recording rainfall can be useful at any time of year.
4. Plan ahead to save you time
As we prepare for the grassroots season to begin, now is the time to think ahead and start planning some of the pro-active tasks that will keep your pitch in tip top condition for the winter months. Relevant tasks might include over-seeding, sand dressing, deep spiking and granular fertilisation . Things you may need to consider could include:
- Have you got the required materials in stock or lined up for delivery?
- Do you need to organise equipment hire?
- Are contractors booked in?
It might feel early to start focusing on ‘winter’ tasks, but prevention is always better than cure, and they will all be more successful if carried out before a problem emerges.
