Pitch repairs vital for new season (From Worcester News)

Pitch repairs vital for new season

8:30am Monday 8th June 2009

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

RENOVATION work to the pitch at St George’s Lane is the primary reason for a lack of home matches in Worcester City’s pre-season programme.

With the exception of the Leukaemia Care charity match featuring a Hollyoaks team on Saturday, July 11, only two fixtures are scheduled at HQ before the start of the new season.

Solihull Moors are the visitors on Saturday, July 25, with county rivals Kidderminster Harriers in town three days later.

A game against League Two newboys Cheltenham, set for the same day as the Hollyoaks fund-raiser, was cancelled to allow the pitch time to recover.

Manager Richard Dryden was also forced to shelve plans for match-ups against the likes of Birmingham, Stoke and Kettering to avoid wear and tear on the new surface.

The club has spent in the region of £7,000 re-seeding the goalmouths and centre circle using a special binding material and, understandably, want to protect it.

“It’s definitely needed,” said Dryden, who saw City win just four times at the Lane last season.

In addition to the pitch work, the brookside will have a slightly different look to it next season as most of the blue crash barriers are being removed.

The barriers were cited for stress testing following a health and safety inspection but City director Colin Layland, who is overseeing the works, said the club had decided to take them down because of the cost involved.

Meanwhile, Only three Blue Square South teams benefitted from a share of £5,000 for good discipline last season.

The Football Conference set up the sportsmanship awards to reward teams for fair play.

Each club started on 54 points and were docked a point for every yellow card and three for a red.

Worcester accumulated 66 bookings and four red cards to finish 15th out of the 22 teams, while champions AFC Wimbledon received £2,142.86 for topping the charts from Team Bath and Basingstoke.