Maintaining a football pitch with effectively no budget

This is clearly going to be a significant challenge and meeting user expectations will need to be clearly spelt out before the start of any season: Users have to be realistic and understanding if this is going to succeed if budgets are non-existent or effectively so. Just being able to play a game on a safe surface is going to be the main desired outcome.

Whilst there may not be an official budget, one or more volunteers will typically be paying out of their own pocket because some materials, especially line marking material and fuel cannot be acquired for free, or not usually anyhow, and someone must pay for them.

Practically everything, especially whether games have to be cancelled or not, will depend on the type of soil that the pitch is located on. The following is based on the assumption that there will only be one football pitch available; with multiple pitches it is going to be unrealistic to attempt to maintain them without some form of ride-on or tractor operated equipment, primarily a mower attachment.

Mowing of the pitch will be minimal but still having to provide appropriate grass heights for as prepared pitch. A height of cut of 40mm to 50mm throughout the year would achieve a suitable playing experience regards ball speed across the surface. For lower tier clubs this height will meet acceptable expectations without the need to cut shorter and more frequently.

If equipment is very limited and there is no access to any form of ride-on or tractor operated mower, then it really is the use of a pedestrian rotary mower to cut the pitch: Certainly not ideal on a regular basis, but “if needs must” then this might be the only realistic option. A 51cm cutting width mower might take around 4 hours to cut an adult sized football pitch: so, 2 mowers cutting half the pitch, each for 2 hours would not be an unrealistic achievement. If the mowers were used twice a week at peak growing season and weekly outside the total number of cuts for this type of pitch might be 45 over the year. This would equate to 90 hours of use from each mower, which could certainly fall within the remit of a good domestic mower. If a typical petrol usage is about 1 litre per hour, pedestrian mowing would then use about 180 litres per pitch. If petrol costs are about £1.30 per litre, which will change over time, then the total annual mowing fuel cost would be £234.

Marking out the pitch must be done to ensure it complies with the ‘Laws of the Game’. It might be a case of a full overmark every so often, but then just selective overmark in between these occasions, focusing on worn lines such as goal mouths and penalty boxes in particular. The cost of a full overmark is not excessive so it might be a case of a few committed individuals paying out of their own pocket to achieve this task. A general guide might be 2 litres of concentrate per pitch (mixed with maybe 8 litres of water) applied with a wheel-to-wheel transfer line marker, costing around £5 to £7 per overmarking. If there were 35 weeks of usage per year and just one overmark per week this would still require a minimum of about £175 for line marking material.

During the playing season and depending on ground conditions the use of hand forking selected worn or muddy areas will most likely be required. Machinery on wet pitches is not desirable as this will cause compaction and can also seal off the surface layer, further reducing the chance of water getting away. Relying on hand tools for localised areas to help reduce the chance of match cancellations will be required. Getting a small core of people together with their own garden forks can be an ideal way of sorting out some waterlogged areas, at least for the immediate term. If 30-minutes of some form of active deeper and shallower forking was carried out, then this would probably be the limit expected as this is a particularly laborious task.

Where areas have been hand-forked and they are still wet on the surface, but not waterlogged, the light application of a medium-fine sand will help create a dry or drier surface which will be more playable. Unfortunately, sand can be quite expensive, so this won’t be an option where no budgets exists. Whether it would be worth some of the usual committed individuals buying some sand themselves is debateable as even a small amount of say just 3 tonnes, which is hardly anything in practice, could readily cost £300 or so.

At the end of the season when the pitch is looking quite worn in areas, there will be a need to try and get some coverage back onto the pitch. Waiting for natural regrowth to take place may produce some recolonization, but this won’t recover all the bare or thin areas, or it will be most unlikely to do so. A fertiliser application along with overseeding with a grass seed (100% Perennial ryegrass; don’t worry about trying to use the highest rated cultivars as any turfgrass cultivars, not agricultural ones, will be fine for these situations) will be required.

If a conservative estimate of just 1,000m² of the pitch only needs some form of renovation this would still require materials as follows:
• Fertiliser applied at 35g/m² = 35 kg (2 bags of 20kg each: about £45-£50 in total).

• Grass seed applied at 25-35g/m² = 25-35 kg (1 - 2 bags of 20kg each; the cheapest low quantity costs for these would be around £80 per bag, with £100 maybe being a more typical price).

It is unlikely any monies would be available for decompaction or wider top-dressing works for this type of pitch, whilst irrigation would be out of the question. Try and lightly fork over and rake even the bare areas so that this will produce a suitable seed bed to help seed gets established into.

Whilst the grass clippings would be returned (‘let fly’) when mowing takes place, returning valuable nutrients, there will still be a requirement for an additional fertiliser to be applied to the whole pitch if a relatively hard-wearing sward is to be produced for the playing season. An application to the full pitch (6,000m²) would be required, typically at an application rate of 35g/m², therefore requiring some 210kg of fertiliser (reducing this to 33.33g/m² would require 200kg of fertiliser, or exactly 10 bags). The cheaper bags would be quite suitable, nothing fancy is required, but a boost of nutrients would benefit the pitch just prior to the start of the main season, so apply sometime towards the end of July or early to mid-August, subject to weather and ground conditions. A typical feed might be 12:6:6, which would cost about £250 for 10 bags, including delivery, but this will depend on the total distance from supplier to customer.

Over the summer period growth would continue, with the quantity of growth being dependent upon soil nutrients and rainfall, whilst the temperatures will typically be quite suitable most of the time, except when excess heat and drought conditions arise. There would be little to do for resource poor clubs during the summer period. However, continued mowing of the pitch is essential to prevent flowering stalks of perennial ryegrass becoming abundant. If this occurs what this would mean is that the grass plant is struggling to survive and to ensure it does survive starts to put all its energy into producing seeds. This process reduces the leaf cover and sward density because nutrients are withdrawn from the leaves and transferred into the flowering stalk to aid reproduction as survival is the primary concern now for the plant.

Mowing on a regular basis will help to control these flowering stalks and to maintain leaf coverage over the pitch.

So, for a pitch with no budget, what is the minimum material cost needed to produce the semblance of a football pitch is about £800, excluding any sand. If, part or all, comes out of the pocket of committed individuals then each season should see some form of recognition for the dedication and commitment shown by such individuals.