University hosts a raft of prestigious tournaments
With the help of Headland Amenity, Swansea University sports facilities Grounds Manager, John Courtney and his team of 3 groundsmen, have proudly played host to a number of high profile tournaments and teams.
Last autumn they were used as a training venue for the Rugby World Cup and were home to Canada, Fiji and the mighty All Blacks. In 2014 they held the European Touch Rugby Tournament and just 2 weeks later, records were broken there during the IPC Athletics European Championships for disabled athletes.
An ariel view of Swansea University sports facilities.
John has been at the university for 10 years and oversees the maintenance of 2 rugby pitches, a football pitch, running track, 2 synthetic surfaces and a mixture of clay, sand and tarmacadam tennis courts – some of which belong to Swansea Tennis Club. “When I first took over, some of the surfaces needed a bit of attention to bring them up to standard” explains John. “Over the years I’ve worked with numerous suppliers and have managed to improve the quality of the surfaces somewhat. However, in more recent times I’ve worked closely with Adi Masters, of Headland Amenity, to create a nutritional programme that’s delivering fantastic results.”
Adi takes soil samples every 2 years and together with John, uses this information to build the feeding programme. Depending on the weather conditions John currently applies Xtend slow release granular fertiliser on a 3 monthly basis during spring and autumn. A selective herbicide, Redeem, is used to control weeds alongside Headlands excellent complexed iron, Elevate FE. Finally Tricure AD, a multi-molecular soil surfactant, is applied to the sportsfields 4 times a year between May and August to prevent hydrophobic conditions and improve soil-surface dry-down.
Although Adi advises on product selection, John is ultimately in control of the programme and decides when to use them – the system works really well. “I use the Headland Weathercheck feature alongside other weather apps to plan applications and this means we can be flexible and react to approaching conditions, such as heavy rain or a prolonged dry spell that may need a response.” John get lots of positive feedback from the teams that play and train there. “They, and other tournaments, want to play here, something we couldn’t do if the surfaces weren’t up to scratch.”