Dave Saltman looks back on a wet September
Shrewsbury Town’s Groundsman Dave Saltman is pleased with how the training ground is holding up despite a wet September.
Last month saw a huge amount of rainfall, but the players continued to train up at Sundorne Castle every day.
“Everything’s generally good”, Dave told ShrewsWeb.
“Last week we had something like 60mm of rain from Sunday night through to Thursday morning. The training ground was holding a little bit of water.
“Percolation rates aren’t as good as the stadium but sand-banding has certainly worked very well this year considering the amount of rain.
“When you think that 18 months ago we would get a downpour and that would stop us using the pitches for two weeks.
“We want to keep working on the training ground pitches. It’s a work in process and we are going to keep sand-banding and we’ve got the lads in today that are earthquaking, which is a linear aeration.
“We are on top of things and hopefully we will get a colder/dry winter rather than a mild/wet winter, because a mild/wet winter’s not going to help us.”
When the training ground was re-developed, the aim was for the players to be able to train their throughout the year and Dave is hopeful that will be the case.
“We are certainly doing everything in our power to make that happen, said Saltman.
“I do hope that we don’t have a stupidly wet winter because as the ground water levels start rising and the ground becomes saturated, it will be interesting to see how it plays.
“We will be looking at it to see how it performs in order to work out what work we need to do on it next season in order to improve it.
“Every football pitch needs end of season renovations and we will keep adding sand to it in order to improve the heavy silt/clay soil.”