First team will train at Poolfoot from start of July
Head Groundsman Dale Frith gave his latest update to the Club website and admitted that he was pleased with the way the Highbury surface is coming along.Frith and his ground staff have been working tirelessly during the off-season to maintain the Club’s surface as well as preparing the pitches at the new training ground.
He said: “The pitch has come on very well and we’re really pleased with it considering the weather hasn’t been the warmest and we haven’t had a great deal of sun.
“There are a couple of weaker areas in and amongst it unfortunately. We had it seeded on the Friday at the end of May but we had some torrential rain in Fleetwood at the start of June.
“This washed quite a bit of seed away in certain places, so like I say there’s one or two places which we’ll pay more attention to over the next week or so.
“The ideal situation for us is rain and sunshine. Torrential rain is too much really but a nice steady rain will do us fine followed by some sun.
“We can’t always have that, so luckily here at Highbury we’ve got irrigation systems to supplement the water if we need to.
“We’re actually at that stage now where we’re backing off the irrigation system a lot, and I don’t think we’ve run it for four days.
“We had some rain over the weekend and there’s more due this week, so that will help with the water build up.
“The reason for that is so the roots in the grass go searching for water and makes them go deeper, which helps everything get stronger.”
Graham Alexander’s first team squad will train at Poolfoot Farm for the first time when they return for pre-season training on July 1st.
“In a way it has been a fairly long summer for the players and the coaching staff given that they finished at the start of May.
“The elite pitches are looking quite well at the moment and are fairly thin, but look well from the side so we’re getting more seed put into those this week.”