Hard Porous Pitch Maintenance: 04. Usage Management

Traffic and surface access management, for both users and machinery, was required to spread wear over the entire surface, especially where smaller pitches were located within the area.

The aim would have been to try and ensure each pitch had similar usage (i.e. wear and tear) rather than it all being concentrated on one pitch.

With machinery it was important to avoid bring grass clippings and mud onto the surface. This was something that could have easily happened where a power unit was used for other non-hard porous work and crossed over a field to get to the surface.

Cross-contamination from one area to another would have resulted in reduced drainage, surface ponding, reduced quality of playing experience, and the introduction of weed seeds. Ensuring that maintenance equipment, particularly tyres on power units, were clean before accessing the surface was an essential part of good maintenance practices.

Where contamination did take place and assuming there wasn’t too much of it, then a sweeping up and removal of it might have been sufficient. However, where considerable quantities had been brought onto the surface and this was mixed or squashed into the surface then this would typically have been physically removed by carefully digging out and replacing with new material. Popular entrance or access areas are often the main areas where contamination takes place.

Good practices also included trying to encourage players to clean off any debris from their trainers, whilst studded boots were not recommended as they could damage the prepared surface quite rapidly.