woodworkimp
Vital Youth Team
I know we have had poor weather recently but does anyone else feel the pitch today in places didn’t look in the best of condition considering the time of year and also on last season?
Like I have mentioned Liam, was an oberservation, i appreciate you taking your time to come on here and explain the situation, I attended the last fans forum so from conversations on that night am aware of the issues the club can and are facing in terms of finances.The pitch certainly isn’t in great shakes right now, this is due to a few reasons.
The main reason is the Everton EFL Trophy game.
Playing on the frost pretty much killed off a lot of all of the surface, which is not only coverage but it also helps keep the sub-surface stable and binded together.
The other related element is the number of occasions the frost covers have been peeled back for inspections/remedial work. I’m told each time we peel back the covers, it is like pulling sellotape from your arm. This too negatively impacts the grass coverage, albeit Everton game is still the principle factor.
The final issues is we have had to limit the hours Brad uses his lamps. The projections were if we continued with the usual trend, it would have cost the club £80,000 in electricity alone. We have had to reduce this to around 1/4 of that. All of this said, the lamps wouldn’t have been able to make a material difference to the points above.
We have no long term concerns and as soon as we get back into growing season the pitch will recover quickly.
Looking forward, the pitch will become gradually worse for Portsmouth, MK and Oxford, with a programme planned to make positive strides (possibly major ones - weather dependent) for the Peterborough game onwards.
Absolutely Ed it was an obvious constant topic of conversation yesterday, it was fair to mention it in a thread on vitals too and it wasn’t posted as a harsh criticism more of a fair observation. It would be expected to suffer with the recent heavy frosts but it was worse than I thought it would beA fair question, quite a few were talking about it at the game, and promptly well answered by Liam.
Good to have have a CEO who will come on here and explain the situation and to see Clive in the Fan Zone yesterday and available for a few words !The pitch certainly isn’t in great shakes right now, this is due to a few reasons.
The main reason is the Everton EFL Trophy game.
Playing on the frost pretty much killed off a lot of all of the surface, which is not only coverage but it also helps keep the sub-surface stable and binded together.
The other related element is the number of occasions the frost covers have been peeled back for inspections/remedial work. I’m told each time we peel back the covers, it is like pulling sellotape from your arm. This too negatively impacts the grass coverage, albeit Everton game is still the principle factor.
The final issues is we have had to limit the hours Brad uses his lamps. The projections were if we continued with the usual trend, it would have cost the club £80,000 in electricity alone. We have had to reduce this to around 1/4 of that. All of this said, the lamps wouldn’t have been able to make a material difference to the points above.
We have no long term concerns and as soon as we get back into growing season the pitch will recover quickly.
Looking forward, the pitch will become gradually worse for Portsmouth, MK and Oxford, with a programme planned to make positive strides (possibly major ones - weather dependent) for the Peterborough game onwards.
Apologies for my initial reply. Just wish all problems in life would disappear so I could actually enjoy life for once!
Never mind the state of the pitch. What about the mud on the players socks? I noticed after about 5 minutes play that some of the players were wearing filthy socks. It ruined the whole Match day experience for me.
Thanks Phil, always good to hear from you.It has been a really hard winter. The frosts from a couple of weeks ago have jaded grass all over with lots of bruising to the leaf and loss of colour. Especially where it has seen footfall. There is a lot of grass cover on the pitch and it will soon bounce back with warmer temperatures.