Football Pitch Repair Work

After match repairs, including divoting is always beneficial as this can help areas recover quicker if any cut up turf can be trod back down or tamped back down with a fork, or special divot fork. The time spent on this will vary according to available resources, with a minimum of 30-minutes for a general check of the surface and minor refixing of divots up to maybe 2-hours, and more, where the pitch has been badly cut up and adequate staff / volunteer numbers are available.

Additional repair work may also be needed after the completion of a game and this would typically consist of a hand forking and sanding of worn to bare areas, primarily in the goal mouth to penalty area and centre circle. The aim being to primarily to keep the surface layer dry and more playable.

If the pitch is heavily worn then the central third strip of the pitch may also need a light sanding, but this would normally be outside the scope of many club resources. For general guidance an allowance of 1 to 2 hours, as a minimum, with an additional single session per month of say a minimum of 4-hours, might be provided within a work schedule to accommodate this additional potential post-match repair work. However, this work would most likely be mainly prevalent during the winter period, rather than evenly distributed over the entire playing season.

For professional pitches there will typically be additional match day staff who would be divoting and tamping down turf at halftime as well as at the end of the match. The number of match day staff will vary depending on the league and staff availability, but up 8 to 10 staff might not be uncommon for this activity.

Other types of repair can include deep turfing of heavily worn areas, but much will depend on the time allowed for the turf to knit in before a subsequent game is played.

Deep turf can be cut by the use of specialist mechanical turf cutters, some (such as the Groundsman TMC46) of which can cut turf to a depth of 7cm. Smaller turf-patching repairs can take place using special cutting tools (such as the ‘Turf Doctor’) which can cut a 23cm x 23cm square piece of turf to a sloping depth of 12cm. This can provide for immediate stability of a turf surface if done correctly and play can take place straight away, however, it is unusual for in-season deep turfing to be carried out on most rugby pitches, primarily due to cost and impact for the area actually covered.