Pitching In
So, as you can image, there’s a fair bit that goes on behind the scenes at a football club. It’s not all training, games, fixtures and planning. This last weekend was a prime example of all hands to the decks when a pitch inspection discovered something alarming on our pitches. The recent very hot summer has clearly taken it’s toll on the grass and shrunk the soil. To such an extend some very old goal post sockets decided to show themselves through the grass.
We couldn’t let anyone play on these pitches until they were dealt with. The worrying thing was, there can’t be just one. Goal post posts tend to travel in pairs!
So to then… with shovels, rakes, angle grinders, hammers and crow bars. We’d already found a couple and removed them well below the surface but now came the game of “find the post”. Not that easy with lots of newly grown grass and freshly deposited leaves covering them.
We tried pacing out and measuring goal post distances and then a highly technical “hit the ground with a spade” idea. That actually worked for a few.
Then came the big guns – a metal detector was brought to the field to scan for the rest. No blade of grass was not scanned and no earth worm* not given a headache as we searched for the remaining posts.
Several hours later and we could stand back and admire (kind of) our very neat and flat mole hill like post removals. A bit of grass seed later and there we had it.
Safe once again for another season of football. Amazing what curve balls the beautiful game can throw at us.
*no earth worms were actually harmed during the dig.
