Pitch Improvements At The Greenhous Meadow In full Swing
Pitch Improvements At The Greenhous Meadow In full Swing
Work to ensure Shrewsbury Town’s new playing surface is ready for the new season is now firmly underway, with maintenance management company Maxwell Amenity starting bright and early this morning.
The Shropshire-based company, who have entered into a two-year deal with the football club, arrived at the Greenhous Meadow at 7am this morning and, along with senior grounds-man Andy Muir, and were straight into stripping away the football pitch.
“At the moment we’ve got the Koro Field Top Maker at work, which is taking the top 10mm of surface off,” said Andy.
“It’s taking all the debris off and getting rid of all the rubbish and preparing it for the next operation which will be an earthquake, which does as it suggests.
“It earthquakes the ground and goes down to quite a deep depth. So today we have had to mark all the sprinklers and all the football sockets because this machine goes all the way down to the gravel raft, which is about ten inches below the surface.”
And it doesn’t stop there as this coming Tuesday will see up to 60 tonnes of concentrated fibre sand spread onto the pitch.
“We need to replace the fibre into the surface,” explains Andy.
“Years of doing this have taken the fibre away and it hasn’t been replaced, so what we want to do is to replace the fibre.
“This will then be ameliorated into the original surface. We will then level it all and then go for a seed and a sprinkling of sand on top – then we are ready to go.
“This process should take most of next week so we are hopeful we will be done towards Friday of next week and ready to play on for the first friendly.”
Town’s first friendly of the season is scheduled to take place at the Greenhous Meadow on Saturday 18th July against Championship side Cardiff City.