Football Pitch Drainage Installation

If you’re a user of the Trust Ground, you will have noticed that the field is becoming increasingly prone to becoming waterlogged during rainy spells. This has seriously affected the football club as the pitch has been unplayable for large parts of the football season leaving the club with a large backlog of matches which they are forced to try and fit in at the end of the season.

The Trust have been fortunate enough to have been awarded a significant grant from section 106 money from the Brooklands development. This grant is for the purpose of improving the availability of the pitch during the football season and will be used to install a new drainage system under the football pitch and to smooth out the worst of the undulations that have developed over the last few years.

This will affect the usable area of the field over the coming Autumn and Winter months.

Work is expected to start in mid September with the pitch being sprayed to kill the current grass and then fenced off. We are told that the spray will be contact safe within two hours of application but we will keep this under review in case the situation changes.

The next step will be to remove the top surface of the pitch and then dig the drainage system which will drain to a soakaway next the the tennis courts. This work will take two to three weeks and we may have to close the field entirely for this period to ensurethat the work can be done safely. If the field is partly open, please check to ensure that there is no heavy machinery moving in the open area before allowing dogs off the lead.

Once the pitch drainage is installed and the surface is levelled. The pitch will be reseeded. We expect this to happen towards the end of October. At this stage, the field will be open, apart from the reseeded pitch. We ask for your co-operation in protecting the pitch until the new grass is established.

We expect the pitch to be usable for foot traffic and pets in the Spring next year.

We’ll post more information here as we it becomes available.