Work starts to make the GM pitch smaller
With the season now over and all the games on the Greenhous Meadow pitch completed it’s time for the work to start to prepare the pitch for next season’s Sky Bet League 1 campaign.Maxwell Amenity Ltd have begun the work this morning and one of the first things to do was remove the existing goalpost sockets in preparation for the pitch to be made smaller.
In recent seasons the Greenhous Meadow pitch has been one of the biggest surfaces around in all leagues and the decision has been made to change the dimensions.
Once the work has been completed the pitch will measure 110 x 72 yards to make it a similar size to match the majority of pitches around.
It’s one of a number of things that manager Micky Mellon is looking at to help improve Town’s home record.
“It’s something that we discussed at the end of the season to give us a better chance of winning games of football”, said Micky.
“Having one of the biggest pitches in country, bigger than even the Bernabeu Stadium, wasn’t conducive to that.
“We will bring it back down to the size that pretty much everyone else who is in the league and I think that will help us a lot.
“It will help us to play a brand of football that I want to play and give us a better opportunity to win more games at home.”
When Town were preparing for games away from the Greenhous Meadow last season they would change the dimensions of the pitch to mirror that of the opponents pitch.
“If we are going to play an away game then to practice the tactics and gameplay we would make the pitch the same size by using cones.
“This would allow the lads to practice things ahead of an away game and for most games we were bringing it in at least two yards each side and two yards in length each end.
“That tells you how much bigger our pitch was than everyone else’s and I don’t think it did us too many favours having a pitch that size.
“I believe it was one of the contributors to us not winning as many games at home as we would have liked to.”
Town’s results at the Greenhous Meadow were poor last season but the games away from home saw the club record one of the better records in the league. Micky and his staff are looking at all ways that the home record can be improved and he hopes this will help.
“It’s one of the things we comb over when the seasons ends and look at things like the home record.
“The pitch size is one of a number of factors, it’s not the only factor that goes into the form.
“We need to address a number of factors to give ourselves the best chance to gain more victories at home.
“It certainly is one factor that we believe will improve our opportunities and its good that we have been able to do that now.”