Module 2:

2.3 Assessing Pitch Quality

2.3.9 Assessing overall pitch quality

1   For each of the individual performance standards ask yourself whether the values you have recorded are within or above your desired range for an acceptable pitch, or are they below what you would ideally like?

Some of your values might actually be within a range desired from a higher quality pitch, whilst other values might be for a pitch that is of a lower quality.

Ideally no value will be below a minimum standard, however in practice this will occur sometimes, but it isn’t anything to be necessarily worried about, so long as appropriate plans are implemented within a suitable timescale to rectify the issue or problem.

If all values are well below the desired standard and some of these values are producing an unsafe surface for play to take place, then clearly some immediate remedial action will typically be needed.

2   In practice, when these types of performance standard are being used as part of pitch management, then except for unforeseen vandalism or extreme weather events, the likelihood of major issues arising should not occur.

The reason being that regular monitoring of a pitch will create a record that identifies a trend of what is happening on the pitch.

3   Some performance standards will typically be monitored more frequently than others, but this activity helps to readily identify if any issues are starting to occur on the pitch, thereby giving a grounds manager time to be able to proactively respond, rather than being reactive, to them.

There can be numerous ways to assess the overall quality of a pitch, but for now we will use a basic and simple method. It will provide an overall rating for how well your pitch meets requirements. This approach provides a useful starting point for a more detailed analysis and evaluation but is suitable for this course to demonstrate the concept of assessing pitch quality.

A thorough analysis and evaluation method will provide the sort of insight that a grounds manager would need to make best use of their resources. Weightings would need to be applied to the performance standards to better reflect the importance of each and the influence they have on pitch quality, how many games can be played without undue wear and the management of a pitch.

However, that is for another course, so our basic concept will do fine for now.

Any values that are scored as below would be investigated further, whilst any that are also deemed to contribute to an unsafe surface would need to be red flagged and attended to as a matter of urgency if further games are planned for the pitch.