these Open Championship Clubs choose to relief grind - Pitchcare

Old and new - Wimbledon’s old Fowell roller
on the back of the new Supreme
Customers can choose rollers of varying
thickness according to their anticipated
flatbed loads, which will affect the overall
weight on the ground. Eric’s customer on
the Isle of Man has ordered the lightest
rollers with steel 8mm thick, as he is
intending to use the flatbed facility to the
full. Headingley and Dulwich College,
who already have a ‘Supreme’ machine,
chose the standard steel rollers at 10mm.
With a 9hp Honda engine, full hydraulics
and a top speed of three miles per hour,
the new machine is light enough for preseason
rolling, but the weight can be
increased by loading the flatbed as the
season goes on.
“Groundsmen are the heroes of our
sports fields, especially when it comes to
cricket,” Eric maintains. “Often, I’ve said
to the smaller clubs, ‘just pay for delivery
and give me the rest when you get your
grant’, but, nowadays, there isn’t the
grant money available.”
However warm and generous an
individual might be (and, having met
Eric and Marlene, I can personally vouch
for the fact that the couple are both), fate
is indiscriminate in its dealings as, in
2007, Marlene was diagnosed with breast
cancer. Having been married for over
forty years and raised two sons during
good times and bad, Marlene is definitely
the ‘power behind the throne.’ She
reacted to the news in a matter of fact
fashion, opting to have a mastectomy.
“After the biopsy results, I was told that
lumps are graded from one to five, and
my lump was a grade four,” she
remembers. “I had the choice of having a
A restored Greens roller
A restored Aveling Barford roller
mastectomy or not, and I told the
specialist to ‘take it all off.’ It’s my life
and my body.”
Having dealt with the crisis single
handed up until this point, once home
and undergoing chemotherapy, Marlene
needed the support of Eric and her sons
who, she confides, had both been in
denial. “My GP told Eric that I couldn’t
fight the disease on my own,” Marlene
says and, after that moment, they tackled
her illness together. Three years ago the
couple downsized to a bungalow, and the
move has proved a resounding success.
Marlene’s health gradually improved
and she began fundraising for Macmillan
Nurses. Last year she helped raise
£11,000; £2,000 coming from roller spare
parts sold by Eric. He is immensely proud
of his wife, and they are both looking
forward to the day, hopefully this June,
when Marlene will be given the all clear.
A year after the move, Eric, with the
help of his eldest son Simon, began work
on his new roller. “I thought, I’ll just get
myself together and I’ll make
something,” he recalls.
Engineering is in Eric’s blood. His
father worked at Fowlers in the days when
this whole area of Leeds was dedicated to
engine manufacture, housing not only
Fowlers, but Greens, McLaren’s and
Hunslets. “Dad was a part of it,” says
Eric. Once the war started, Mr. Smith
senior became part of the effort to keep
up moral. “I grew up on the fairgrounds
of Lancashire and Liverpool. Most of
them had shut down, and it was
important to keep the ones that were left
An illustration of the Barford & Perkins 3A
donated to Consett Locomotion Museum
Summer Sports - Cricket
running. Dad was their resident
engineer,” Eric explains. “I went to any
number of different schools.”
The new roller gets its name from a
Mrs Deacon who ordered a showman’s
traction engine from Fowlers during the
time that Eric’s dad worked there. It was
one of the first to be built with a chrome
spiral trim. Mrs Deacon insisted that the
trim was the wrong height and had to be
trimmed down. Only when this had been
accomplished would she accept her new
machine. “It’s the ‘Supreme’ engine,” she
said, little knowing that the name would
be resurrected in 2011.
Gone are the days of huge hand rollers.
“Times have changed and standards have
gone up,” Eric says. “I’ve watched old
men struggle on cricket pitches for years.
I remember one guy (he’s ninety years
old and retired now), at Sherburn cricket
club, using the front roller from a steam
engine. Another club actually used a15
tonne machine up and down the wicket!”
Eric’s ‘Supreme’ roller is the result of
years of experience and a sound
knowledge of the needs of cricket club
groundsmen. Now that he has produced
his own design, do the couple have any
thoughts on retirement? “Eric will never
retire” says Marlene, and perhaps that’s
just as well. Judging by the reaction to
this first new roller to come out of Leeds
for over forty years - Headingley’s Head
Groundsman, Andy Fogarty, has been
quoted as saying, “It’s a good, compact
machine” and “it’s like two rollers in one”
- the Smith family are going to be too
busy.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012 PC 85