Module 3:

3.4 Relative annual frequency of activities

Introduction

1   For a final activity in this module, we just start to consider how often the different maintenance activities might, typically, be carried out over a year on a football pitch.

This is more of a thought experiment than anything else as the result can be quite subjective and will vary somewhat depending especially on the desired quality grade of the pitch, as well as usage, soil type, geographic location of the pitch and available resources.

The following exercise is just a primer for a more detailed analysis that will be carried out in the last Module (8) when you will create your own annual maintenance work planner.

The maintenance activities carried out on a football pitch can initially be split up into two groups, which we will call ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’. The criterion for inclusion in the groups is how often the activity is most likely to be carried out over a year (which is not the same as relative importance of the activity) over the year on a reasonably good (i.e. Grade 2) football pitch, which is used for adult, amateur, grassroots games.

Note: Don’t confuse ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ with ‘Essential’ and ‘Desirable’. This is not what is being asked here.

2   Exercise: Categorise activities into ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’.

  For now, try and put the 20 activities into the two groups of ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ activities. Use the downloadable worksheet sheet to help complete this task.

This is all quite subjective, so your grouping might be a little different from ours. That’s fine as there is mostly not a right or wrong for this type of grouping. Besides identifying activities, it also starts us thinking about the frequency of an activity and is a really good base from which to develop your learning.

We have started off by adding in mowing and line marking to the ‘Higher’ group because we have already mentioned that these are possibly two of the most common activities.

We have included a table in the worksheet with two columns, each with 12 possible lines for each group.

3   Hint: In our completed table we have identified 10 activities for the ‘Higher’ group and 10 activities for the ‘Lower’ group. Don’t forget that we have already mentioned that this is subjective, so your grouping will probably not be the same as ours especially as the range of variables can be quite different. Don’t worry if you have a big difference from ours (there isn’t really a right or wrong for this type of exercise), the purpose is to start the thinking process off about the frequency of activities each year.

For now, try and put the 20 activities into the two groups of ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ activities. Use the downloadable worksheet sheet to help complete this task.

This is all quite subjective, so your grouping might be a little different from ours. That’s fine as there is mostly not a right or wrong for this type of grouping. Besides identifying activities, it also starts us thinking about the frequency of an activity and is a really good base from which to develop your learning.

We have started off by adding in line marking and mowing to the ‘Higher’ group because we have already mentioned that these are probably two of the most common activities.

We have included a table in the worksheet with two columns, each with 15 possible lines for each group.

4   Download worksheet

Here is the worksheet you can download to complete your own statements for the purpose of each feature.

We have kept the first two example statements in the worksheet.

We have now started to think about the relative frequency or total occasions an activity is carried out. When you attempt Module 8 you will then start to consider actual figures for these activities by creating a 12-month work plan to help you maintain and manage your own football pitch.

We will also look at maintenance activities in more detail in Module 5, in particular how they are connected to other course themes.

For now, congratulations on completing this Module 3. We will now have a brief summary of the module before attempting the recall section.