{"id":354,"date":"2020-10-20T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T12:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/?p=354"},"modified":"2020-11-06T13:40:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T13:40:59","slug":"speedy-gxi8-hd-saves-precious-hours-for-brinscall-village-juniors-fc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/speedy-gxi8-hd-saves-precious-hours-for-brinscall-village-juniors-fc\/","title":{"rendered":"Speedy GXi8 HD saves precious hours for Brinscall Village Juniors FC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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A forward-thinking committee and a thriving community has seen Brinscall Village Junior FC virtually double its playing teams from 16 to 29 in the last five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over 300 young footballers aged 5-18 years and an open age team, the club affiliated to Lancashire FA has a huge appetite for grassroots sport; not bad for a village with a population of less than 1500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volunteer groundsman, Mark Bolton, also displays a commitment far beyond normal expectations. He works full time as machinist with BAE Systems at Samlesbury, with his part-time volunteer work at the football club racking up an additional 20 hours on duty. He joined in 2013 and his dedication to upgrade all four playing sites has been integral to much of the success.  Along the way, he and his helpers picked up Lancashire FA\u2019s 2018 \u2018Grounds Team of the Year\u2019 award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I started it was just as a football coach; the coaches also cut the grass and marked pitches for their own games, so nothing formal was in place,\u201d said Mark Bolton. \u201cNow, I\u2019m head coach, I also run the U15\u2019s, and am responsible for all pitch maintenance and finding playing slots for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pitches are housed at locations within a two mile radius. In 2007 a Football Foundation grant saw Brinscall secure the Hillside Parke site for a new nine-a-side pitch. The club also shares a site with Brinscall Cricket Club, adjacent to the cricket square is a full sized pitch, with two additional pitches belonging to the local CofE school that the club maintain as part of a community partnership deal. These school pitches now rank among the best school pitches in the county. Finally, they have another 11-a-side is  which is situated in neighbouring Abbey Village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brinscall sits 780 feet above sea-level and boasts its own micro-climate.  \u201cCan\u2019t lie,\u201d continues Mark Bolton, \u201cI live 2\u00bd miles away and wear t shirt and shorts but as soon as I come up here, the layers go on\u2026 In winter it\u2019s nicknamed Pneumonia Park<\/em>.  Chorley is five miles to the south; it gets about 1100 mm of rain a year. Our weather \u2013 even in the summer -can be a bit of a challenge\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early October, Brinscall took delivery of a Wiedenmann Terra Spike GXi8 HD, from dealer Balmers GM at Burnley. \u201cThe Terra Spike,\u201d said Mark Bolton \u201cwas the piece of kit central to our needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbove all else I knew we needed an aerator but making it happen isn\u2019t that easy. A grassroots club like ours needs to fight for every penny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbout 18 months ago I was invited to a behind the scenes event at Wembley, whereupon I got to talk about our facilities with head groundsman, Karl Standley.  He was very helpful and encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFast forward five months and I got a call from Lancashire FA\u2019s Lee Boyer to tell me that Karl, together with Scott Brooks, then the head groundsman at the FA\u2019s St George\u2019s Park, would visit next day. It was such a gesture to come to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven on a pretty damp day they were immediately struck by our view down the valley on to Rivington and beyond. It is breath taking and always such a positive feature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThey recognised ours is heavy clay soil. \u2018Get air into the pitches as often as possible\u2019, they said. \u2018Aeration on repeat; every five weeks to put some fractures into the clay to get it open\u2019. As a contractor charges around \u00a31000 a time to do all pitches, they advised applying for funds and saving to buy our own.  They said as a volunteer, the club needed to make best use of my time; aeration speed was imperative with five pitches to maintain. They suggested that as Wiedenmann aerators do pitches in around 3 hrs and were incredibly fast I should try one. So that\u2019s what we did. Ben Cook from dealers Balmers GM and Wiedenmann\u2019s Mike James and Andy Kerr came out twice to demonstrate, once just prior to lockdown and then when restrictions allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that Mark and the Brinscall committee, including Chairman, Mark Oldham, made further funding applications and cleared the necessary hurdles and assessments. Ian Mather Brewster, the GMA\u2019s regional pitch advisor for the North West, supported all he could. Existing machinery was sold and spend throughout the summer was minimised. In September 2020, Brinscall Juniors was awarded \u00a345,000 thanks to Lancashire FA and a Football Foundation Grant. As well as the Wiedenmann Terra Spike, the team purchased an Iseki tractor a Wessex RMX mower and Charterhouse multi-sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Terra Spike went straight into use removing compaction, improving drainage and promoting root growth with all pitches initially spiked to a depth of 175 mm using 12 mm tines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlready I\u2019ve used the GXi8 on our Abbey site to get standing water away from a corner. Before I knew it, I\u2019d done a third of the pitch. But we\u2019re happily into the five week rotation and that will go on until about April. One particular area where thatch is a major issue will be hollow cored in spring to get sand deep into the soil profile\u2026then assuming the pitches remain soft enough, the plan is to continue light tining across the summer with 8mm tines. We\u2019ve also promised to assist four local schools with the occasional free aeration of their pitches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now their new maintenance machinery is in place, Brinscall\u2019s next challenge is finding more space to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith 29 teams in truth we\u2019ve run out of space\u201d, continued Mark. \u201cWe thought we\u2019d secured temporary respite by booking pitches at a new 3G centre down the valley for our under 18s. Pitches which were to be available from October won\u2019t now come on stream until February 2021 at the earliest because of Covid. That bad news means one of the 11 a-side pitches is receiving immediate remedial attention to try to withstand the additional winter play it\u2019s going to get. The GXi8 got an extra run out, punching 20mm holes at 25 cm deep, followed the next day with a contractor spreading 60 tonnes of sand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHowever, a short-term fix won\u2019t resolve the accommodation issue. After a bit of searching we\u2019ve identified a piece of land which might help us out. If we can persuade the farmer to lease it to us, then with some work on my part, we\u2019ve found 2021\u2019s project,\u201d laughed Mark Bolton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A forward-thinking committee and a thriving community has seen Brinscall Village Junior FC virtually double its playing teams from 16 to 29 in the last five years. With over 300 young footballers aged 5-18 years and an open age team, the club affiliated to Lancashire FA has a huge appetite for grassroots sport; not bad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":362,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}