Marshalling his troops - Pitchcare

The world of football -
Ian Holloway style!
“Right now, everything is going wrong for me - if I fell in a
barrel of boobs, I’d come out sucking my thumb!”
“Some weeks the lady is good looking and some weeks
they’re not. Our performance today would have been not the
best looking bird, but at least we got her in the taxi.”
She may not have been the best looking lady we ended up
taking home but it was still very pleasant and very nice, so
thanks very much and let’s have coffee.”
“To the people who booed -boo to you!”
“When my mum was running our house, when I was a kid, all
the money was put into tins. She knew what was in every tin
and I know how much I’ve got in my tin - that’s the way we’ll
run this club.”
“I feel a bit like the nanny who is trying to calm down the
kids.”
“When their man was sent off, it seemed to wake up the
crowd and give them someone to get their teeth into and,
fortunately for us, that was the referee.”
“There was a spell in the second half when I took my heart
off my sleeve and put it in my mouth.”
“I’ve got to get Dan Shittu ready for the Stoke game. I’ve told
him to go to Iceland and ask if he can sit in one of their
freezers.”
“Apparently it’s my fault that the Titanic sank.”
“It’s all very well having a great pianist playing, but it’s no
good if you haven’t got anyone to get the piano on the stage
in the first place, otherwise the pianist would be standing
there with no bloody piano to play.”
“I am a football manager. I can’t see into the future. Last
year I thought I was going to Cornwall on my holidays, but I
ended up going to Lyme Regis.”
“You can say that strikers are very much like postmen: they
have to get in and out as quick as they can before the dog
starts to have a go.”
“I always say that scoring goals is like driving a car. When the
striker is going for goal, he’s pushing down that accelerator,
so the rest of the team has to come down off that clutch. If
the clutch and the accelerator are down at the same time,
then you are going to have an accident.”
“I’ve got to knock that horrible smell out of my boys, because
they smell of complacency.”
“We need a big, ugly defender. If we had one of them we’d
have dealt with the first goal by taking out the ball, the player
and the first three rows of seats in the stands.”
And finally ...
“He’s six foot something, fit as a flea, good looking - he’s got
to have something wrong with him. Hopefully, he’s hung like
a hamster - that would make us all feel better. Having said
that, me missus has got a pet hamster at home, and his
cock’s massive.” - talking about Cristiano Ronaldo.
perimeter, with eight set in the
playing area.
Work on the stadium pitch
commenced on May 30th.
Vegetation was koroed off, leaving
a clean profile to be power
harrowed, levelled and topdressed.
90 tonnes of new Fibresand was
added to the pitch to improve the
density of the fibre in the top
100mm, which was then oversown
with Johnson’s Premier.
A Dennis G860 cassette mower is
used on the stadium pitch for final
preparation. Four Asuka pedestrian
rotaries are used to mow and clean
up the pitch before and after
matches. The pitch is maintained
at around 27mm.
At the training ground, trailed
gang mowers and a Trimax Pro-
Cut rotary are used.
On the day of my visit, Stan was
out on the stadium pitch taking a
number of soil samples with Gary
Potter, ALS Sales Manager, to
ascertain the nutrient status of the
pitch. The new seed had been up
for several days and was looking
good, awaiting its first cut with the
rotaries.
Gary sends the soil samples off
to ETT Laboratories for testing, to
ensure that Stan has a clear
understanding of what the pitch
needs in terms of NPK and trace
elements. In this instance, the
results showed a deficiency in both
potassium and potash, which was
addressed with an appropriate
dose of NPK to bring the feeding
programme up to speed. The pitch
will receive several feeds during
the peak growing season, both
granular and liquid.
Once the grass has established, a
programme of Primo Maxx is
applied to improve sward density
and rootmass. The new pop up
system will deliver water uniformly
over the whole pitch. Any bare
areas will be oversown, and the
whole pitch will be oversown
sometime in September with
rough-stalked meadow grass.
At this point in time, Stan is
unsure how the temporary stand
will affect grass growth but, like
many stadiums, the pitch already
suffers because of shade when the
sun is low and soil temperatures
drop, so it is a situation that he is
able to cope with. He remains
confident that he can deliver the
quality playing surface required for
Blackpool’s excursion into the best
football league in the world.
I would like to wish Stan and his
assistant Alex all the best, and
hope they enjoy their
time preparing their
playing surfaces for
some of the world’s
best players.