A pitch inspection will be required ahead of our match with Beaconsfield Town tomorrow afternoon. Chairman and Head Groundsman Kevin Sturmey has provided the following update.
“I have serious concerns for tomorrow’s game as we haven’t been able to do the repair work we normally carry out after a match as the pitch was saturated yesterday after a lot of rain overnight. We had 3/4 inch of rain on Tuesday but the big difference was Simon and I had spent 2 days on Sunday and Monday preparing the pitch with the Quadraplay and mower so it was in great condition to take the rain we had on Tuesday, even the flooded areas went through fairly quickly without having to pump the water away. However, one heavy shower on Wednesday and the game would have been off as it’s been so dry under the surface the ground cannot percolate the water through quickly enough.
Having just walked on the pitch it’s still too wet to use our tractor and slitter or quadraplay as we need to get air in the ground after a match. We had a verti-drain (deep spiking) booked for Thursday with Mowtech our Contractor but with the pitch saturated and holding water it couldn’t be carried out which was frustrating but that is the risk of only 2 days between matches. Incidentally we wanted to play this game in December but the League set the date as Salisbury wanted a different date to us. We will always try to avoid a Wednesday and Saturday home fixture as if the weather isn’t kind. Simon and I are not miracle workers and if it was dry enough after the game I would have got on the tractor until 1am if necessary but it wasn’t.
Whilst today is a good drying day we need a whole day of drying with no rain for 24 hours so the second day we would be able to carry out the normal works the day after a game. Having just checked the forecast again overnight is poor and I think any rain will result in the pitch being saturated yet again. Of course the weather forecast can be wrong but also in my humble opinion it’s not fair to Beaconsfield who have a very long journey not to make an early assessment so a pitch inspection is arranged for the morning hopefully before 9am. The rain we seem to get now is monsoon like and the amount of rain we had over 3 to 4 days would not be an issue but we are getting it over a few hours which will be difficult for any pitch to cope with.”