Earning his Spurs - Pitchcare

Memorial garden View from the pavilion
through ninety degrees.
With this in mind, Paul consulted with
Old Trafford’s Head Groundsman, Matt
Merchant, to see what needed to be done
to ensure the tracks would be okay for
the allocated matches. It was agreed that
three central strips would be
decommissioned from play and
renovated in late May 2010, the strips to
be fraise mown, levelled, deep spiked,
topdressed with Boughton County Loam
and re-sown with a BSH seed mix, the
aim being to get decent root growth and
a deeper loam profile during this
summer’s growing season. Paul has also
fed the square with a granular 12:0:6
NPK fertiliser to promote growth.
The square gets cut at 9mm during the
growing season and reduced to a match
Who are you? Frank Newberry, Performance
Consultant and Conference Speaker. I have
been happily working in the turfcare sector
for over twenty years.
Family status? I am married with three
grown-up sons. Just to keep the balance my
brother has three daughters.
Who’s your hero and why? My clients are
all heroes. Any individual who wants to
improve themselves or the work
performance of their people is taking up a
heroic position in my view. Their ‘heroism’
inspires me to do better.
What is your dream holiday? In recent
years I have been asked to speak at
conferences abroad. This makes it possible
for me to travel to some of the places I have
always wanted to visit. I can do my work at
the conference and then have a few days
holiday with my wife. I love the work I do so I
guess a working holiday is my dream holiday.
What annoys you the most? More than
anything else I get annoyed with myself.
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playing height of 3mm via a ten -
fourteen day preparation programme.
This is where the Dennis FT610
cassette comes in useful, with the
tungsten verticut reel fitted to clean out
debris. There is a hydrant at the corner
of the square for watering.
Early season performance of the
square has seen good pace and bounce.
The rest of the summer will be based on
fulfilling a busy fixture list until the end
of the season.
Paul has good experience of
maintaining new grounds, having done
similar at Haydock Cricket Club, and
which he continues to oversee, eleven
years later. Paul is confident that
Westhoughton will be successful, but it
needs the support from players and
social members. Running a modern
cricket clubs takes a lot of time and
commitment from all concerned, and
What would you change about yourself? I
would get less annoyed with myself.
Who wouldn’t you like to be? I wouldn’t
like to be anyone who was without hope.
Favourite record, and why? Lady Gaga
sings three or four of my current favourites.
It’s great that she can be so talented and so
scary at the same time.
Who would you choose to spend a
romantic evening with? My gorgeous wife.
If you won the lottery, what is the first
thing you would do? I don’t do the lottery.
If you were to describe yourself as a
musical instrument, what would you be
and why? The tuba. I am somewhat round
and I have a big mouth at one end.
What’s the best advice you have ever
been given? Seek first to understand, then
to be understood.
What's your favourite smell? I love the
smells you get at the seaside. The sea air,
hot dogs, candy floss etc.
What do you do in your spare time? I like
to relax by reading whilst I am soaking in a
nice hot bath.
What’s the daftest work related question
you have ever been asked? I was once
asked by a client to ‘keep my eye’ on
someone during one of my training courses,
because the client intended to sack him if I
did not think he was up to the job. I was to
be his last chance. Thankfully, I was able to
Chairman, Gary Dixon
comes at a high cost.
As an example, on the grounds side
alone, the club has to commit around
£40,000 each year to materials,
machinery, consumables and wages, so it
is important that they have the means to
generate such figures by being organised
and well run.
Westhoughton will, no doubt, attract
new players. The club have a policy of
not paying players, so rely on the fact
that they want to join a forward thinking
club with excellent facilities and good
coaching programmes. Who knows,
maybe the next Freddie is
already turning his arm over in
one of Westhoughton’s junior
teams.
TWENTYQuestions
Frank Newberry - wants to learn to play the piano in
another language and is gaga about Lady Gaga!
quickly explain that a lot of people behave
quite differently on training courses than
they do in real life, so his work on my course
would not be a reliable indicator.
What’s your favourite piece of kit? It’s
boring, I know, but I have two rather
expensive, but cleverly designed and very
robust flip chart stands that I like having
around on seminars.
What three words would you use to
describe yourself? Positive, competitive,
expressive.
What talent would you like to have? I
would like to be able to speak other
languages and to play the piano.
What makes you angry? More than
anything else, I get angry with myself. I tend
to the view that a lot of the time, when
people get angry, they are angry with
themselves first. ‘Why did I trust this
person?’ ‘Why did I not check this out
properly?’ They cannot cope with feeling bad
for very long, so they quickly turn their anger
onto someone or something else.
What law/legislation would you like to
see introduced? This is easy. In the UK we
should have a ‘presumed consent’ or ‘optout’
organ donor card system. This would
mean that, unless you had an ‘opt-out’ card
on you, organs from your dead body could be
used to save the lives of others. It is
scandalous that thousands of people die
every week because only a tiny proportion of
the population carry donor cards.