Manchester Rugby Club measures up to remote mowing

One of the world’s oldest rugby clubs is pioneering newest technology to streamline its groundcare.

Manchester Rugby Club ranks second or third behind Blackheath and Liverpool St Helens, formed in 1860 and still a major force in the grassroots game, fielding men’s and women’s teams across all age groups.

“The jury is out on exactly which club can claim the crown of ‘Oldest rugby club in the world’,” says Jonathan Sheard, who is sitting with me in the bar with fellow longserving volunteer groundsman Mike Stewart.

Manchester finished a respectable third place in the Level 5 Regional 1 North West league this season and is now anticipating an exciting period into autumn, not only preparing for the new season, which kicks off in September, but also focusing intensively on preparing the site for some special visitors, who will be using the grounds later in the summer.

The club runs three men’s senior teams and one women’s side, plus a large boys’ section with ten age groups and a rapidly expanding girls’ section across four age groups.

With a sporting calendar of some fifty home league and cup games, Jonathan and Mike, along with volunteers Neil, Tim and Di, usually prepare for two senior side fixtures on Saturdays and Sundays – tending four full-size playing areas in total. Time management is critical, therefore.

Volunteer groundsman Mike Stewart

“We average thirty hours a week on pitch surfaces,” says Jonathan, whose son plays here, “but cannot afford to run a full-time groundsman. The last time we did was in the ‘90s.”

Mike adds: “Our calculations show that looking after four pitches would need one and half groundsmen, so 60 hours a week.” The importance of volunteers to delivering professional playing surfaces is only too clear to see for what is an 18-acre site.

Both men have been managing Manchester’s ground “for more years than we care to mention”, though they do anyway. “It’s over twenty years since we were dropped in at the deep end,” recalls Mike, who played prop from the ‘70s at junior and senior levels.

Three volunteers are assigned grass duties, the others see to everything from hedge trimming and sweeping up to looking after recycling.

The club has recently added to its grounds staff, however the latest recruits differ markedly from their predecessors. Two Stiga A10000 robotic mowers are regularly moving purposefully across the club’s stadium and training pitches to bring their hardworking human colleagues welcome relief from the time-consuming task of mowing.

“We use the mobile app to programme the robots to cross cut the playing areas,” says Mike. “One mower is dedicated to the stadium pitch, the other cuts where we programme it to, while we use a rotary deck for outer edges, as the robots’ turning circles dictate how much they can cut beyond the pitch perimeters.”

It was a club player who had an ‘in’ with Stiga, a machinery and equipment manufacturer that regularly donates items to charities, clubs and amenity sites.

“They were happy to provide us with two GPS controlled mowers in return for publicising and promoting the products and the company,” says Jonathan, adding: “The stadium carries their perimeter advertising.”

As the mower name suggests, the robots can cut up to 10,000m2 before needing a recharge from their own docking unit, which came with the package. “That was a key reason for selecting these models,” Mike explains.

“As a pitch is 70 X 100m, once you include deadball areas, it’s nearly at the robots’ charging capacity.”

Volunteer Neil James (left), with Jonathan Sheard (right). Mike Stewart looking on from the cab

Jonathan then checks his mobile before confirming: “One of the robots is cutting the stadium pitch as we speak (it’s around 7pm), and that’s the beauty of these mowers – you can programme to cut whenever you like, freeing us up to get on with other tasks.”

“They’re mowing between four and six hours at a time, cutting at 35 to 40mm, in all weathers, twice up and down the pitch and then across it, taking three days to complete the job. Basically, we tell them when to cut and programme them to stop mowing when we want them to.”

How about the goalpost surrounds. Tricky? “There’s a separate programme for that,” Jonathan confirms. Mike adds: “There’s about two hand mowers’ width they don’t cut because of turning round. Their light weight on the surfaces can reduce risk of compaction, which in turn can save the club money in avoiding the expense of aerating the pitches. They’re a Godsend really, and fit in well with our maintenance schedules.”

If not quite a case of ‘beg, borrow or steal’  for grounds maintenance kit, Jonathan and Mike have applied all their skills and contacts to gather machinery critical to continuing Manchester’s professional standards.

“Sale Rugby Club helped by renting us their Verti-Drain, but buying your own machinery works best for us in the long run,”  Mike explains.

And there’s always the opportunity to apply for grants. “The club is good at filling in funding applications,” Mike says. “The Football Foundation and RFU is match funding our new New Holland Boomer 55hp turfcare tractor and SISIS Quadriplay, which we’ll use for knocking back divots after games, removing worm casts and dressing the pitch ready for matches.” Sport England is also on their radar to approach, he adds.

Sharing machinery with Cheadle Hulme Cricket Club next door is a sound option too. “If both clubs can use the same equipment, we share purchase costs,” Jonathan explains.

Already running a Ford 3930 tractor formerly owned by a local golf club, the two of them are eagerly awaiting arrival of another same-brand tractor, largely Football Foundation funded, with the club stumping up 25% of the purchase price.

Housed in a bespoke, secure compound, CCTV monitored, Manchester can claim to be well-endowed with the quality and scale of machinery professional standard playing surfaces merit.

A roller cut rotary, Verti-Drain 7416, 1.2m SISIS slitter, two Honda rotary walk-behinds and a fertiliser spreader are housed there, as well as the robots and tractors. Oh, and a Bowcom Linemarker Plus, used to mark out the stadium pitch every fortnight and the other playing areas as required.

After expressing my surprise at how well-equipped Manchester is, Mike responds: “A GMA report said we needed more equipment. A sportsturf consultant for ProPitch, engaged by the RFU, visited us three times to report on the stadium pitch. Meanwhile, we’d installed dedicated changing rooms, designed to meet RFU standards.”

The team has stepped up nutritional inputs too – “NPK fertilisers,”  Mike confirms. “We’ve upped the quality of nutrition over the last four or five years, in part to enhance pitch colour, and also apply a four-cultivar perennial rye seed from Hurrells.”

The size of the grounds and their semi-rural location require the team to bring external help. “At the end of the season, we put out the scarifying and topdressing to a local contractor,” Jonathan says.

Arb work is an outsourced task too. “Lots of oaks line our boundaries,” Jonathan notes, “and we simply cannot manage that kind of work ourselves, so the arborist comes in at the end of June to look over things and undertake any work required.”

Volunteer Neil James

Jonathan tackles the hedging, itself no mean task – “it takes me seven hours” – work he completes with the Stihl hedgetrimmers bought a couple of years back, and augmented last year with blowers and brushcutters.

Are the hedgetrimmers battery powered? “They wouldn’t be practical,” states Mike. “The hedges take so long to trim that we’d have to keep coming back to recharge the tools.

Then there’s climate change to contend with. “Last year, we were underwater in April. This year, it was so dry we bought a Plantex mobile irrigation system to enable us to seed the pitches. Permanent pipes are laid under the stadium and best second pitches, supplying water to the mobile sprinkler, which we can move around the surfaces.”

With 800 members, of which some 450 are rugby players, the demands on the team to satisfy playability standards is mounting as Manchester Rugby Club continues to grow.

“I started working on the grounds with very little equipment,” Mike recalls. “Knowing the right people and networking with the Cheshire Grounds Association for example has helped us build up the fleet and the quality of our pitches.”

“Visiting clubs praise us when they play here, remarking that the pitches look really good. But we want more volunteers to help maintain the structure behind the groundcare programme and the quality of the playing surfaces.”

Playing rugby over the years gave Mike the impetus to develop facilities for youngsters. “I wanted to get as much playing surfaces for girls and boys as I could, so created a handkerchief pitch, 50m by 30m for tag rugby,  draining, levelling, seeding and nurturing an unused area. Now we have 50 kids playing on it every Sunday.”

Intelligent mowing sessions

Stiga autonomous robot mowers are cable-free. The installation is virtual and the working perimeter of the robot can be adapted anytime. With the patented AGS technology, the robot can plan mowing sessions intelligently. You have full control of your robot from the STIGA.GO app.

• Intelligent mowing using AGS technology
• Stiga Active Guidance System to predict GPS signal availability and mow efficiently
• 4G connection and Stiga Cloud for constant communication
• Three mowing cyles a day - suitable for grass up to 10,000m2
• Precision cutting for a fine finish
• Free connectivity included