these Open Championship Clubs choose to relief grind - Pitchcare

Winter Sports
With Southampton flying
high in the Championship,
their free flowing, passing
game requires a good
surface. Charged with
providing that is Grounds
Manager, Andy Gray, and
his team of four
It’s not all been plain
sailing as our editor
discovers
Southampton Football Club have
been at their ‘new’ home, the St
Mary’s Stadium, for just over ten
years. The name reflects the
club’s history; they were formed
in 1885 when at team from St. Mary’s
Young Men’s Association played their
first match on the ‘backfield’ of
Hampshire County Cricket Club.
After over one hundred years at their
former home, the rather quirky ‘The
Dell’, with its odd, almost wedge shaped
stand behind one of the goals, the club’s
move to St. Mary’s saw a dip in their
fortunes as they slid down the leagues.
Now, currently riding high in the
Championship, a return to the top flight
looks on the cards, and the quality of
the playing surface is a contributing
factor.
Some well known names have graced
the surface at Southampton, amongst
them Mick Shannon, Kevin Keegan,
Peter Shilton, Alan Shearer, Alan Ball
and Matthew Le Tissier. Tottenham’s
current star, Gareth Bale, played in his
When the
SAINTS...
formative years for the Saints.
Managing the surface is Andy Gray,
one of the youngest Grounds Managers
in the country. He was promoted to the
role one year ago after a spell as joint
head groundsman after Dave Roberts
had left the club for Charterhouse
School. Dave and Andy had not been
involved too much with the original
laying of the pitch as they were still
working at The Dell.
By modern standards, it is a relatively
basic design, built over a gravel
raft/carpet with primary drains running
at 3m centres, a 50mm binding layer of
grit sits on top, which was originally
covered with a 200mm depth of 80/20
rootzone. The rootzone was, at the time,
95% sand, 2% silt and 3% clay, and laid
totally flat, i.e. with no crown.
This original pitch specification
brought with it some serious drainage
problems that Dave and Andy had to try
and overcome. It took them a couple of
years to find out the exact cause and
begin remedial work. The problem was
that, after heavy rain, the pitch did not
drain effectively, water was being held
in the shallow (200mm) sand profile by
capillary tension. In scientific terms, the
hydraulic drive was not enough to push
the water through the shallow profile - a
shallow, perched water table was
preventing any free draining.
Most modern pitch profiles have at
least 300mm depth of rootzone
materials, thereby giving the necessary
hydraulic drive to push water through
into the primary drainage system. The
300mm depth enables the pitch to build
up enough weight of water to help push
it into the drainage layer, thereby
allowing the pitch to meet its specified
drainage rates, often designed to cope
with 25mm of rain per hour.
The ideal solution would have been to
reconstruct the pitch. However, for
various reasons, that option was not
taken. So, the only other option was to
carry on with appropriate aeration
works and then, over time, begin to
increase the depth of rootzone during