Football Pitch Groundskeeping Course

Introduction

Why this course?

1. To help you better understand the need to look after a football pitch.
2. To help you use your resources wisely and cost-effectively.
3. To help you develop a mental model of the many connections and interactions in groundskeeping.
4. To provide a solid foundation for further studies in groundskeeping.

How long is the course?

The course has been designed for about 30 hours of study and learning^*, although this excludes the time for the end of course self-assessment module.

The actual time taken for the course will depend on many factors, in particular your own approach to learning and whether some of the activities are carried out on-site or as a thought exercise.

If this course is used as a quick refresher course, with just headline points being reviewed, then the anticipated study time might be about 5-hours.

^* As and when updates are made to this course, as well as feedback from users, the course length and guide learning times for each module may need to be adjusted.

Who is the course aimed at?

There are two main groups of people this course is aimed at:

1.The main group will be

volunteers, typically helping at a grassroots club,
employees who have just started in a new role in groundskeeping,
individuals who are just about to get involved in groundskeeping.

2. The second group will typically be professionals (employed or self-employed) who have been looking after a pitch for several years and want a general refresher. This will be especially relevant for individuals who have not been able to do any training for several years.

Successful Outcomes

We hope you enjoy your learning journey for the course and achieve success in what you do.

A measure of the success of the course will be twofold:

1. Firstly, how well it contributes to improving your understanding of, and in making connections with, the work you actually do on a football pitch.
2. Secondly, how well the course contributes to improving your work performance.
We could add a third measure and that is how much the course has encouraged and motivated you to delve deeper into learning more about groundskeeping.

Course Design

We’ve designed the course along the following progression routes.

Firstly, we want to know what it is that is to be looked after.
Secondly, now we have provided the course foundation we now need to know what we are aiming for.
Next is what is needed to produce the desired pitch. This includes the work required, the materials used, the purpose of the activities and a shallow dive into some aspects of turf science.
Next up is making sure that the practices that are carried out are done in an appropriate and safe manner.
To finish off the course we help you to create an annual work plan which will help you to apply the knowledge gained in the course into a practical management aid.

There are eight broad areas in this course, all of which are involved in looking after a football pitch, and we will refer to these as modules. We will look at these next.