Message Board - Football: same old problems
11 Mar 2008 by Maesglas Football Club.
Hello again
its the same old question see pic below for an idea of what I mean for an answer. The pitch was developed some years ago (man made) with a bank on one side and quite a flat playing area, with no drainage system either ( too much money for the council to put drainage in). The pitch has a remarkable playing area ie : after rain, one side of the pitch will be dry and the other saturated ( again see pic below ) all we want to know is why, and why is it the rain always sits in the same area every time it rains no matter how many times we fork the areas. Your help would be very much appreciated.
11 Mar 2008 by jlawrence
To answer that you need to do some excavations - you need to know what is different about the various areas.
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
12 Mar 2008 by vid Last edited 12 Mar 2008
Almost certainly one side of your pitch is cut away and the otherside made up, it may be that the imported material has a heavy clay content and is fairly destructured by the levelling, or the cut away side has removed the free draining topsoil and cut into a heavy clay sub layer. Jons right dig a few exploritary holes to have a look - I bet in the wet areas there is a thin (50 -100mm) layer of good topsoil with a heavy clay lying underneath. Also if the rain sits in the same areas the pitch is too flat not to have drainage - its all very well to give you a nice level pitch, but without drainage you would have been better served by a slight slope down hill with no banks. If the banks you mention are on the down slope then they will be preventing any surface and subsurface (compaction due to the weight of the bank) run off, another built in problem to sort!!
12 Mar 2008 by vid
Looking back through your old posts it would seem you still havent investigated the root cause of your problem. A light aerator will not solve your problems nor will forking the layers - this will just make the ground even softer. I also dont think from what you keep on saying that compaction is the cause. As I say above you need to examine the construction and exactly what they did when they made the pitch - this is almost certainly where the problems lie. It is unlikely by the sounds of it that anything other than drainage will fix this. If the pitch is completely level then mole draining will achieve nothing as the drains created will not run.
12 Mar 2008 by Maesglas Football Club.
Vid thanks for those words, but its very frustrating, we have looked at mole drainage as the budget we have is tight, but as you say it may not solve the problem. We dug a square by 6 inch hole behind the top goal, you may be able to see it in the pic, and this held the rain water for a few days, there is a lot of clay mixed with the top soil so i have been told, and along with compaction hasnt helped matters. We have spiked and aerated the pitch a few times and as you say it was a waste of time. We need somebody with time and the experience to come and look at this, there is no one as far as we know with the kind of experience in the Cardigan, Ceredigion area. If there are then please get in touch.
12 Mar 2008 by fidget
Paul,
We have similar problems so we have contacted our county FA, they came out & they will hopefully support us when we apply for a football foundation grant to get more drainage. The forms are an absolute nightmare, wanting to know the ethnic make-up of our dozen or so teams, plus everything else to the nth degree.
Also try the National Playing Fields Association, now known as Fields in Trust (FIT).
Who owns the pitch?
12 Mar 2008 by Maesglas Football Club.
Fidget
The local council Ceredigion own the pitch, we have a yearly lease on the pitch, so as you can tell we do not want to fork out in case they pull the rug from under us. The pitch was not used since it was developed for about 5 years until we took over.we have tried to look after it as best as we can, and at times it can be great, but one drop of rain it all changes.......
12 Mar 2008 by fidget
With a one year lease any grant application would probably have to come from the council. Unfortunately anything more than forking is going to cost.
I'm not sure what to suggest except getting the council on your side, if they have other pitches they may have access to decompaction equipment, if that's what's needed. But then again it may be easier to find a better pitch for next season.
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