To ease the major ground keeping workload and the looming cost increases, for 2023/24 the site is being divided into 2 distinct sections:
- the lawn playing surfaces within the white boundary boards.
Alan and John will continue to do these as now.
- all other non-playing areas, eg hedges, verges, paths, embankments, fences etc but excluding flower borders/pots and buildings.
Volunteer members will be sought to form a team to be trained to carry out the wide variety of jobs to maintain the whole site to the standard to which we are accustomed. Fred Owen has agreed to attempt to set up and manage this for a transitional period of up to 12 months.
Basic Outline
To get things started Fred will:
- Encourage member participation in a team of, say 10/12, to support Alan
- Seek team volunteers and arrange training to suit
- Organise the team to a work schedule agreed with Alan
- Arrange for the work to be done at times (as closely as possible) to suit team members availability. This could be during the day and in daylight evenings, for example.
- Try using doodle.com to organise the teams on dates when work is planned
Safety will be paramount. We will adhere to jobs we are competent to do safely.
We will adapt the way we organise ourselves to make the experience enjoyable, satisfying and rewarding. What we learn could inform how we proceed in future seasons.
Playing members are requested to be tolerant if we happen to be using power tools during your games!
Who knows, we might yet discover that elusive Assistant Groundkeeper!
Your support will be appreciated.
Fred Owen
29 October 2023