Groundsman looks at the impact the snow has had on the pitch
Shrewsbury Town Groundsman Dave Saltman is hopeful that Saturday’s game against Blackpool will be on despite the snow.
The Montgomery Waters Meadow pitch has been covered with snow since Friday and at its height the snow reached 10 inches in places.
“It’s white”, joked Dave.
“It’s still got some snow on there now but certainly a good deal of it has melted over the last 24-hours and I think it will naturally clear itself now, but the weather could change, so we’ve got one eye on the weather constantly.
“The stadium pitch is fine under the snow. We didn’t cover it because the snow came last Friday morning and we were all down at the training ground trying to get some area available for the lads to train, but there was no need to cover the pitch and the snow’s been a good insulator anyway.
“What we may end up with now is the snow disappearing from the stadium pitch over the next 24 to 36 hours and then Friday night’s expected to be quite cold, so we will probably put the covers out Friday night just to project the pitch going into Saturday.”
Prior to Saturday attention will turn to the Sundorne Castle Training Ground and Dave admits that it could be difficult to get it fit for purpose before Saturday.
“There’s going to be a lot of water and the training ground won’t drain quite as well as the stadium, so it’s going to probably need an extra 24 hours of dry weather to at least get some areas of the training ground fit for use”, said Saltman.
“We had probably nine or ten inches of snow in the end, so getting on for a couple of hundred millimetres and that’s a lot of water when it all melts so quickly.
“The pitch was spiked a couple of weeks ago before the snow arrived, but the snow’s been down since Friday and we had a lot more over Sunday and Monday, so there’s not a lot we can do.
“We had part covered the training ground on Thursday last week, prior to Friday’s snow, so Friday morning we were able to pull the covers back a certain amount with the help of the first years, but we’ve now got some big rolls of snow that we’ve got to try and get rid of as well.”