Module 1:

What is a football pitch?

1.3.4

Observation of football pitch

If you are able to go out and walk over part (maybe at least one-half of it) of a pitch for the next exercise, then this will be ideal. If you are not able to do this then try and think back to when you were last on a pitch as you attempt this exercise.

As you walk over part of the pitch, or reflect on when you last walked over one, have a think about any other features, especially what might be called technical or even scientific ones, that might be useful in helping to describe the pitch.

Jot them down, and then compare them with our list in the next section. You may have quite a few different ones from ours, but that is fine.

How many additional features are you able to identify?

If you can think of another five different features, then that is good going.

We have added another 15 so that the total we have identified so far will be at least 26 different pitch features, all of which could be used as performance standards, if so desired.

Here are our suggestions for another 15 features:

You may not have heard of some of these features, but don’t worry about that, the purpose is to show there are many different features that can be used to help describe a football pitch.

12. Live ground coverage.
13. Weed content.
14. Disease damage.
15. Pest damage (directly or indirectly, especially from grubs).
16. Desirable grass content.
17. Undesirable grass content.
18. A safe run off area.
19. Good grip for players.
20. A firm (not too hard nor too soft) surface.
21. The bounce of a ball.
22. The distance a ball rolls.
23. Soil pH.
24. Soil nutrients.
25. Organic matter content.
26. Water infiltration and drainage rate.

Some of these features are often further divided, for example, soil nutrients will usually be recorded as separate features of Phosphorus and Potassium, as well as sometimes Magnesium; so, this would be three performance standards. For the moment though, we'll just consider it as a single feature.

So, we have now identified 26 features which could be used as performance standards.

But why are these features helpful for a groundskeeper? Just identifying a feature doesn’t provide much value at the moment.

To start helping understand why they can be useful to a groundskeeper we first need to add a short sentence providing at least one reason for each of them.

Module progress: 67%