If you’re an avid fan of football, you might notice that the pitches look in perfect condition for every match. Now, we’re not talking about Sunday league football here, we’re talking about Premier League pitches and where some of the best professional footballers in the world play.
It’s no wonder that with all that money, Premier League teams are able to keep their grass pristine all season long. It’s all down to the expert football grounds staff they hire to maintain the natural grass pitch. You might be thinking they could make it easy for themselves by installing artificial turf, but natural grass performs better and feels better for the players. If you ask most footballers, they’d say they much preferred playing on natural grass rather than synthetic. Artificial grass is actually known to cause more injuries and the ball doesn’t roll or bounce as it does on natural grass. However, to make sure the pitch is in a fantastic condition all year round, technological advances have made it possible for artificial turf strands to be woven into the pitch vertically, this allows the natural grass to anchor to the artificial fibre, meaning that you’ll get the feel of natural grass with the added benefits of durability from the artificial strands.
Football grounds staff, or a professional company that carries out sports turf services, will maintain the club’s football pitch by performing a range of services, using state-of-the-art machinery and best practices. In this article, I’m going to talk a bit about each service they carry out and the benefits involved.
Mowing
Starting off with the most obvious one, you would have probably guessed that each football pitch needs to be regularly mowed so as not to get too long. Long grass can cause the ball to get stuck on strands and simply not perform as footballers would expect. The ideal height of football pitch grass is between 25-30mm.
Aeration
Aeration allows the soil below the grass to get enough oxygen to promote healthy roots and improves drainage. Aeration is carried out by creating small holes in the pitch and then top dressing over with sand. These holes are created either by verti draining or hollow tining, verti draining uses solid tines whereas hollow tining uses hollow tines and removes the cores from the pitch. This is usually carried out on a dry day when it’s not been raining.
Irrigation
Most Premier League pitches have an irrigation system installed in the turf, this is the sprinklers that automatically water the turf when it needs it. The sprinkler system doesn’t only include water though, it also includes fertiliser to promote healthy growth and to make sure the turf doesn’t dry out. Sports turf irrigation is one of the most important factors of an effective football pitch maintenance strategy.
Overseeding
Overseeding football pitches is a turf renovation service, it’s carried out after play to thicken/top up the sward and rejuvenate damaged grass. Machines carrying out this task need to be able to sow to a consistent depth in hard ground. This is usually performed after irrigation.
Winter maintenance
We all know how cold and frosty the UK can get, many games would get cancelled due to a frozen or icy pitch if we didn’t have expert grounds staff to maintain our professional football pitches. You might not realise it, but many Premier League clubs have had undersoil heating installed, this is extremely expensive, and you won’t find this at your local club. When the weather takes a bad turn, clubs won’t have to worry about postponing matches due to their system heating the underside of their pitch, preventing snow and ice from building up.
After the footballing season has ended, repair work begins on the pitch, it’s given a break for a couple of weeks and the pitch recovery begins ready for the new season. Groundskeepers are crucial in the game of football. They make sure matches aren’t postponed due to the turf and that the turf performs at the optimum level so it’s fair for all the players and fewer injuries are caused due to poor-quality grass.
If you’re interested in a pitch that’s built for the likes of Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane, and Erling Haaland, then ALS Contracts is the ideal company to call. They can complete football pitch construction as well as football pitch maintenance, their team has many years of experience in the installation and management of completely natural grass pitches and they’d be more than happy to meet your requirements to the best of their ability.
Content provided by Piranha Solutions
