Grounds Weeks - celebrating those that look after green spaces.

Grounds Week is a nationwide annual campaign celebrating the expertise and professionalism of those responsible for maintaining the UK’s playing surfaces and green spaces.

Rotherfield FC's Grounds Team have provided an update on the challenges and accomplishments so far this season.

What a season this has been at Rotherfield from a grounds keeping perspective!

It all started with a hot dry summer that resulted in a hose pipe ban meaning we couldn’t irrigate. Not the worst news when you only have a half inch hosepipe & of course not significant when compared to trying to live with water rationing or stand pipes that I remember from 1976!

However it did mean that about 40% of the new grass seedlings from the repairs completed in May just shrivelled & died.

We tried more fertiliser when there was rain in the forecast & in part this worked to get the grass we did have in decent condition but of course this came at a cost.

So we started the season with less grass density than we would ideally have wanted.

The damp warm weather of November saw a return of the leaf spot fungal disease in the grass that reduced grass density & further die-back was only curtailed by spraying with seaweed. This fungal disease is prevalent in this area & can be prevented but at a cost!

Up until December the weather was quite kind & we only postponed a handful of matches. Rain was regular & we had good conditions to deep slit, turf groom & verti-drain (deep spike).We even managed to verti-drain in late December with near perfect conditions meaning the tractor hardly marked the surface.

Then it rained & rained & rained such that by the end of February we had to postpone more matches than at any time in the last 20 years & Saturday morning junior football only took place once! We would get the pitches fit on a Thursday with about 3 days work & then our efforts were thwarted by Friday or Saturday morning rain.

Our Wealden silt soil was saturated & swelled up. The main pitch drained in about 8-12 hours given the secondary drainage gravel bands but the minis never dried out & the bottom pitch was just a moving morass of saturated “plasticine”. The ground was too wet for any machinery although we did get the main pitch verti-drained when a window of opportunity presented. We even saw the sun briefly!

There was light at the end of the tunnel though- the hosepipe ban was lifted meaning if we had used machinery we could at least clean it!!!

Then the incessant rain stopped. We delayed our March reseeding by a week as we wanted to plant grass not rice, & managed to get this completed when conditions were almost ideal. We are seeding in March (rather than May as in the past) to avoid hot early summers (as in 2025) shrivelling the grass before it is established. This requires the use of grass seed that germinates at lower ground temperatures & which establishes more quickly. This of course comes at a cost, about 15% more than standard seed.

That brings us almost up to date. The seed has germinated (in 14 days which is pretty good) & it is raining. But this rain is different! We want it! The main pitch (& the minis) have become dust bowls given the dry warm sunny weather (& all the work we have done to increase porosity) & the grass is very hungry given lots of nutrient has been leached from the soil over the wet winter. Plus the Wealden silt soil is not exactly a rich loam!

So the next task is to get spring fertiliser on the pitches to feed their hunger!

Just at a time when oil prices have risen significantly, meaning fertiliser prices are increasing exponentially!

The bottom pitch was even used on March 21st, the first time in 2026, as we cut it multiple times given the growth & performed the slitting etc works so essential to getting air to the roots.

As volunteers we try our best to make dynamic decisions for the pitches to take account of the weather & grass condition. We undertake lots of the routine tasks ourselves like cutting, brushing, slitting, turf grooming & spraying/fertiliser spreading but for the supply of the correct materials & specialist contractor activities (seeding, verti-draining) we rely on contractors with whom we have built relationships over many years. These contractors change scheduled activities to suit our ground conditions & will schedule us in for works on a Tuesday when I call on a Sunday. I know we pay them but we get Superb service!

We plan our weekly maintenance tasks checking as many weather apps as we can find to try to get the best information, but the weather beats us occasionally.

It is infuriating, frustrating & simply annoying on many occasions. More so this season than any other we can remember.

So if on occasions we are not impressed when people are annoyed when games are postponed or when people show surprise that their game is off commenting that the pitch looks good (from the car park!) please understand that we have probably spent 3 days trying to get the game on & the decision has not been taken lightly!

Don’t even get us started on warm ups on the pitch especially in the goal mouths & dogs on the pitches!!!

Despite all the frustration we really do enjoy looking after the pitches trying to make them play as well & look as good as we can.

If we can have 3 wishes these would be

- a bigger budget for more fertiliser & deep spiking

- £20,000 for secondary drainage gravel bands to the mini soccer junior pitches

- 200 tonnes of a rich sandy loam for all the pitches.

Any Aladdins out there?!

Pete & Dave