hi need a little bit more grass seed and have no budget left for football pitch get about £300 a yr to do the work now and its all spent so am after anything people can donate or buy from very cheaply if possible?????
Here we go again.........
13 Aug 2010 by vid
Agree Leeboy - you shouldnt have to come on here and beg David. I would imagine the larger majority on this message board suffer with miniscule budgets and would love freebies as well - times is hard. If they want a half decent pitch the players or team will have to find a bit more funding
Can somebody give me a couple of pallets of cricket seed please. I can then renovate every cricket square for less. Helping everyone.
Got 3 bags of MM50 cost me £180, want to make an offer?
I appreciate the comments and everything is worth a try in this day and age you never know who maybe able to help hence why input it on here. The pitch is looking 10 x better than last year and will be pitting pics up when sun shines again. We all start somewhere and I fully understand that I m no where near good enough just yet but once I ve been on some courses and do some volunteering at grounds I'll have a better knowledge and understanding.
Thanks
I am sure that you are doing a good job David, keep learning, enjoying and you will get there.
14 Aug 2010 by Mike Last edited 14 Aug 2010
David - going off what you have said on here, the problems seem to be with the actual running of the club. The best groundsmen in the world can't produce a top quality pitch with resources, and that is what you need to sort out i.e. get into the committee and get them to find/release funds for the upkeep of the pitch.
For three reasons, and this may be a bit harsh, I would say people shouldnt/cant help you:
1-Most people are getting a bit tired of the messages begging for stuff, albeit maybe not your fault and you are only trying to help the club out but its really not your responsibility to provide the things you are asking for.
2-By not helping it will make the club realise they should find funding from somewhere and not rely on yours or anyone elses donations etc, after all how would they manage if you werent there?
3-Everyone at grass roots level will be feeling the pinch and in the same boat, so to expect a lot of places to part with even a handful of fertiliser would be a lot to ask.
Mike A,
thanks for your comments and i know i m going off a bit of the subject but sometimes these things just do lol. right well where we are based and play is in a village of less than 2000 people easily, its a very small club 16 squad players only and have been going 63 years. The pitch itself has only ever been cut and marked out until the last few years, this year or end of last season it was my choice to do as much work as i could possibly do down there to get it in much better shape, eg goal mouths, no burning in lines, a container for equipment nearer the pitch, goalposts etc etc and this is what i have done. problem is the funding i myself have put in £600 to the club for a mower, line marker, and a few other bits for the pitch, then have meetings with rec committee and they agreed to put a budget together of what they could afford to put towards the pitch each year this being £300-£400 each year obviously this year was hard as a lot was needed and not all could be done. i wish i could of have had it verti drained and drill seeded but couldnt, all i could do was de compact goalmouths level off and re seed, then go around all the lines and level off and re seed, paint goalposts, and returf certain trouble areas where mole holes were. they are not able to put in anymore money and i personally have been able to get in extra money from various people and places which totals to about £500 for balls, nets, corner flags etc things we have needed for about 10 years but had no money to. this is where problem is and in radius of 3 miles there are 2 bigger villages with at least 3 sat teams from each and are doing very well in the leagues which attracts more players and more sponsorship....................................
Leeboy,
i appreciate everything you or anyone else says and i know some of the harsh things i deserve and some i dont but we are all doing the same thing albeit on different scales, i love the club i play for, do groundsman work, am club secretary and i do this for enjoyment, love and to keep the villages only footy team alive. if we had a bigger village etc then it maybe all different and i d have a budget of £1000 a yr for the pitch but i dont.
i will still do the best i can in the situation though and will continue to do so
14 Aug 2010 by Mike Last edited 14 Aug 2010
David - your priorities are misguided i'm afraid, and if it continues I fear that you will become disillusioned and ultimately resentful of the club... I have seen it happen in the professional sector, so if it happens at higher levels (which it does, and all too frequently as downtrodden groundsmen become sick of having nothing to work with), you can bet that it will happen at your level.
The goodwill that you show your club will lead to them becoming over reliant on what you do for them - if you love the club as much as you say you do, then you need to address this as once you are gone, the club will be left with nothing. Focus your efforts on building an infrastructure which will develop and grow year upon year, and long after you are gone.
If your club want a pitch, they need to have the infrastructure in place to maintain it... would you buy a car if you couldn't afford tax, petrol, insurance, servicing etc?
You speak of the amount of people in the village - 2000 you say? That's more than there is in my village, and our team is fantastic - they have a team of volunteer groundsmen, plenty of funds are made available to the groundsmen, they have a nice clubhouse, a very good pitch given the small stature of the club, a thriving youth system etc. So, ask yourself, how come my local club is seemingly so far ahead of yours in terms of development... i'll tell you why it is, it's because the club committee do a first class job of keeping their priorities in sight. Hell, one village over here has a less than 500 people, and they even manage to have a fantastic, sustainable little facility.
I'll spell it out for you one more time - Build an infrastructure, then the rest will fall in to place. OK, it's not for you to build that infrastructure, but by spending your own money, begging for materials on here etc, you are halting any potential progress towards the first step of building an infrastructure, and that first step is recognition, which is something that your club committee need to see, and they will only see this when you take a back seat.
A good committee can make the world of difference. But not all clubs have the luxury.
David, I wish you luck - you somehow need to find ways to raise more funds.
Tonight I got a call to say that the village hall had been broken in to after our tennant team had played. Our tennant pay our ground rent. Fortunately I had been to the ground between the match and the break in and was able to report that the hall was locked and so the tennants were not culpable. I was also told that the village hall chairman had a cheque for us from the local steelworks union - it will pay for 2 bags of seed. Small donations from generous sponsors go a long way....
The ciderman rolls
How about writing to some of these over paid premiership footballers for a contribution may be worth a try as a lot came from grass roots football all over the world. Ian
Can you just is the longest sentence in the world !!!!!!!
15 Aug 2010 by minch
Hi David,
Beware the man bearing free gift!!
In a case like this when you need to overseed a high-performance area, you want the right seed for the job. Not all seeds are suitable!!
Likewise, beware old seed if someone should offer it to you - it may well not germinate at all, or may not attain a significant proportion of germination.
Likewise - cheap seeds offered by internet firms (present company excepted Dave!) may not be 100% viable.
If you are going to the time and trouble to do a professional job, you need the right materials. Get some advice, get some budget, if necessary get some sponsorship from a local source - get the right materials and do the right job.
I'm more golf than football but the same principles apply.
Good luck.
Paul.
16 Aug 2010 by fes
How about the sixteen man squad paying £5 a week 52 weeks a year = £4160,.
I am sure they will spend more than £5 on after match entertainment
Yes David
Do the players pay a match fee? If so how much? Fes idea of paying fiver a week all year is nonsense cos they dont play all year but maybe maping anohhter 2 quid a week when they do play would help.
All players of football and cricket get their sport cheap, none of them anywhere in the land pay enough but getting match fees out of them is hard work.
What do I do? I just cut the grass.
16 Aug 2010 by fes
£5 a week nonsense ?
I know they do not play all year, but renovation is a twelve month operation.
My eight year old grandson pays £3 pound every week all year round because his club recognise to have decent facilities they have to pay for them.
Barry, by the time you've taken into account preseason training and matches it probably ain't far off being all year. You're right that getting fees out of them is hard work.
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
hi all,
the players pay £4 a game and we have a lot of students that play hence why it doesnt go up etc, this covers, pretty much line marking paint, changing room fees, ref fees, fees for season afters league reg fees etc
i d love to charge more we just cant do it or a lot of players wouldnt fancy paying more than £5-£6 a game
David
I fully understand. Our second eleven league match was abandoned after 1 and half hours and yet only managed to get half the side to cough up a match fee, the rest either bu**ered off without paying or didnt see why the should have paid anything.
What about the tea they gobbled up? What about the pitch that was prepared for them, what about umpires fee?
Pathetic.
Fes youve more chance of winning the lottery than getting senior players to pay all year round fees. A one off yearly sub and match fees is all you can hope for
What do I do? I just cut the grass.
Simple answer Bary (if you've enough players) then they don't get picked for next week.
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
On the fund raising point a few raffles and maybe a disco can help a lot without being too painfull then say help the club by fund raising or the fees will have to rise. Ian
Can you just is the longest sentence in the world !!!!!!!
As well as being a cricket nut I am also Treasurer of our local Football Club and have been for 25 years.
We were at a lowish ebb financially a couple of years ago so Match fees went up to £5, average ref cost £25 hire of pitch changing rooms £42, they do a draw after the game in the pub with a prize donated by the pub.
Fair do's to our lads, they have fundraised their nuts off now got £8000 in the bank, because of a deal we made, if they did the fundraising we would reduce the match fee back to £3.
Footballers are the worst of the lot when it comes to paying for their sport, cricket match fees are £6/ £4 and a sub of £50, we run regular fundraisers and turnover is now in 5 figures when I started in 1985 as CC treasurer I paid all the bills (or as good as) times can change with a good concerted and combined effort.
IF people can take take given the opportunity they will carry on take take
What goes around, comes around
well,
all the advice sounds good but in reality we cant just drop them if they dont play as dont have enough players for that. but if i could get the players to do fund raising that would be a huge benefit to the whole club and the village but we have some players that couldnt give a t*** really which is a shame but we have a handful of players that would give and do anything and 2 players that have been at the club 10 + years which for a village our size is super and i found out the village only has 400-800 people in it not the 1000-2000 i quoted earlier...............
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