Greg Aiming For A Brighter Summer
Notts County's Stadium Manager Greg Smith is hoping a brighter and warmer summer this time around will benefit the Magpies' pitch next season.
The Magpies' playing surface came in for some heavy criticism at stages last season, but with that all in the past Greg is confident next seasons pitch will fare far better.
Work began on preparing the pitch for next in the early hours of Monday morning this week, with around 10mm of the top surface ripped up. 90 tonnes of sand was then added to the surface and then levelled out, before the entire pitch was re-seeded just after 7pm the very same day.
The twelve-hour operation went according to plan, and now Greg and his groundstaff will be keeping a close eye on the surface and also carefully treating it through the next few months.
He said: "Everything went according to plan, and we're very happy that the pitch project is underway.
"Right now we're just carefully treating the pitch, seed and feed if you like, and making sure it receives plenty of water and also making sure everything is levelled off just right.
"It is an important time right now, and our target is firmly set on making sure the pitch is in tip-top condition by the time we play Stoke City at the end of July in a pre-season friendly.
"This will be our third season of football and rugby at Meadow Lane, and we're looking forward to hosing both once again on the pitch.
"We strive to provide the best surface possible, and that is a challenge as a groundstaff team we're all very much working towards achieving."
And Greg admits, he has his fingers firmly crossed for a much better summer - which will in turn benefit the pitch.
Last year, heavy rain played a big part in how the pitch fared for the next nine months.
"This year, we're hoping for a far better summer which will in turn allow the pitch to benefit," Greg explained.
"When we began our work on the Meadow Lane surface last year, we experienced a quite cold May and the pitch didn't get the sunlight we perhaps felt it would receive.
"Along with that, we had a few torrential downpours of rain in June, which mean the roots simply didn't settle properly.
"And once the season was underway the roots quickly came up as they were not settled, but we never once had a cancellation for either football or rugby and that was something we were very pleased with."
