Shetlands pitches (was Madrid Cup Ness V Spurs)

[penfold]

TONIGHTS GAME AT CUNNINGSBURGH IS POSTPONED DUE TO A WATERLOGGED PITCH

[Jay_Corolla]

This is why we should play summer football!!...

[EISTnWAST]

Boddam and Sandwick unplayable as well?

[penfold]

Both shut till the first week of May.

[EISTnWAST]

Why the first week of May? [yes I'm being pedantic, but answer the question please]

[penfold]

In the case of Boddam it is because there is a lack of healthy grass on the playing surface, due to the nature of the ground at Boddam there is a lot of water retention in the pitch over the winter and this rots the root of the grass I am led to believe. So they took the decision to open in the first week of May to allow the pitch to dry out and give the grass a chance to get going.

 

Sandwick I believe were waiting for a contractor to come and address a problem they had with the pitch and get the work done before they opened and the heavy rain over the weekend did not help.

 

As Ness United do not own any of the pitches in the South Mainland they have to comply with the decisions made by the owners groundstaff.

 

Cunningsburgh shut yesterday due to the heavy rain over the weekend and Monday, due to the pitch being waterlogged in places. Anybody who played in the B game against Delting will testify to the heavy nature of the pitch and how easy it cut up, so their groundsman decided to shut it to prevent further damage to the surface.

 

The only other grass pitch in the country area's to be played on so far I believe is Baltasound. Strom, Fraser Park and Brae are all still shut. though games have been fixtured on some of them for this weeks games.

[kirsty]

“What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball.â€

 

This comment is irrelevant as it seems that there is plenty of green grass and balls, but no one is allowed on them. God help us if we had Manchester or Glasgows rainfall figures (which are higher than Shetlands) and they only stop playing in May. We over protect our surfaces!

[penfold]

I don't believe our footballing cousins in the Mainland are untouched by weather problems Kirsty.

 

http://www.thesafa.org.uk/safa/news/Club-News/Fixture-chaos-as-weather-hits-hard.asp

 

http://www.thesafa.org.uk/safa/news/Club-News/Bad-Weather-Call-Offs-Affect-Many-Games.asp

 

http://www.thesafa.org.uk/safa/news/Club-News/Ploughed-Fields-for-Pitches.asp

[EISTnWAST]

Surely you mean ironic Kirsty?

 

It's disappointing that a pitch as new as the Sandwick one is having problems with drainage. Is the contractor fixing the problem the same contractor that gave the pitch a face lift a couple of years ago?

[penfold]

I think Kirsty is unsure of what she means most of the time, I'm not aware what the problem was EistnWast just going on what the contact for the pitch told me when I enquired about using the Sandwick pitch for Ness under 16 and 14's games this year.

[EISTnWAST]

What I was hinting at, but don't want to say (but you're making me say now ), is are these guys fixing the Sandwick pitch the same guys who didn't do their job properly the first time?

 

Just how it looks from where I'm sitting.

[kirsty]

I wasn't having a go at you Penfold. Just using your quote to make a point about the over protection of parks in Shetland.

[glenn]

To maintain a football pitch outwith council control is a very difficult task and requires a huge amount of voluntary hours. None of these pitches would continue if it wasn't for the council grant money they gratefully recieve. However this is a modest sum with little room to accomodate anything other than the absolute basics.

 

For instance once you take into consideration insurance, electricity, servicing machinery and basic materials a park keeper who takes a small amount of pride in their work would recieve much less than minimum wage. It is therefore in interests of these volunteers and park keepers that a cautioius approach is taken at the beginning and end of every season.

 

Last summer I become involved with the Fraser Park. It was in a very bad state of affairs with regards to finance and facilities. We have started to make a little progress over the winter though there is a long way to go. One thing that I have realised though is how incredibly lucky the football clubs in lerwick are with regards to provision of facilities.

 

Scalloway FC have to purchase goals, nets, line markers and paint. They also line the pitch and clean the changing facilities after each game. The goal areas must also be returfed at the end of each season plus a donation raised for venue hire, last year this was a four figure sum not including pennies. All this on top of just running a football club!!! I would suspect that this is not an uncommon situation amongst country football clubs and football venues.

[penfold]

I have to agree with you there Glenn, The country pitches have access to equipment from the council, and I have to say from experience that they are good to deal with and will where they can go out of their way to help, but it has to be paid out of a budget.

 

The pitch at Cunningsburgh was over used at the start of the season last year, and it didn't fully recover until the end of July, in the time it took to recover no team really wanted to play on it because the surface was so uneven, "due to too many games when it was to soft and wet" This year the approach has been to go on a game by game basis, along with other works planned hopefully it will improve the drainage and surface, but none of these works has an effect over night.

 

People making uniformed statements like "we over protect our parks" without knowing the work that goes into keeping a park in a condition that folk want to play football on it need to "volunteer or be a groundsman" for a year and then have an informed opinion.

 

Anyway more to the point will Fraser park be open for the Ness Scalloway game on Friday or is it being over-protected too

[Colin]

Having been involved with the Fraser Park in the past, I have to agree with everything Glenn says.

 

If council run parks hit a problem, they have access to a lot of resources (including funding) that can help resolve them whereas independents, such as the Fraser Park and some others, have to make do the best they can.

 

It is also worth noting that independent parks qualify for a maintenance grant amounting to 75% of their total annual expenditure capped at a maximum of £6000.

At the risk of labouring this point;

To qualify for the maximum you have to spend at least £8000 and, when you have no money to start with, this is an almost impossible level to to achieve.

The Fraser Park IMHO would need around £10k pa for at least the next 5 years to bring it up to a reasonable standard and that's just for the playing surface.

 

Compare this with SIC/SRT run venues who are faced with no such restrictions. It always used to irritate me that Clickimin etc. were receiving nearly £2m per year running costs (not just for football) whilst the rest of us got peanuts.

 

It's not easy trying to balance the needs of the whole community against the needs of Scalloway FC and, during my time as a Trustee, the decisions on whether or not the playing surface was useable were left entirely to the park keeper who, as he knew the park well, would make them on a match by match basis.

 

The Fraser Park, from memory, does not officially open to the community until 1st May each year. I don't know the historical reason for this but I suspect that it might have something to do with being very 'wet' with terrible drainage.

Playing on it to early in the year would damage the playing surface quite a bit and make it bad for everyone.