‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

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‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

Leicester City’s renowned Sports Turf Academy goes under the spotlight to mark Grounds Week 2022 – which aims to elevate the industry.

2022-03-03T14:10:00.000Z

by Sam Jones

Published

03 Mar, 2022

‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

Leicester City’s renowned Sports Turf Academy goes under the spotlight to mark Grounds Week 2022 – which aims to elevate the industry.

Sam Jones

2022-03-03T14:10:00.000Z

‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

Leicester City’s renowned Sports Turf Academy goes under the spotlight to mark Grounds Week 2022 – which aims to elevate the industry.

Sam Jones

2022-03-03T14:10:00.000Z

‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

Leicester City’s renowned Sports Turf Academy goes under the spotlight to mark Grounds Week 2022 – which aims to elevate the industry.

Sam Jones

2022-03-03T14:10:00.000Z

‘It Becomes A Career, Not Just A Job’ – Shining A Light On Grounds Week 2022

Leicester City’s renowned Sports Turf Academy goes under the spotlight to mark Grounds Week 2022 – which aims to elevate the industry.

Sam Jones

2022-03-03T14:10:00.000Z

Whether based at King Power Stadium, LCFC Training Ground or Belvoir Drive, you’ll never be far from finding a pristine surface on display. To dig deeper into what actually goes into preparing top-quality grass pitches on a daily basis, four members of the Club’s ground team sit down to explain the importance of the sports turf industry.

A major recent development at Leicester City came with the arrival of the Sports Turf Academy. Set up in late 2020, it allows young people to earn a valuable qualification, learning within the classroom while also working as an apprentice at the state-of-the-art training ground in Seagrave.

Sports Turf Academy Manager, Dr. Jonathan Knowles, started by explaining the importance of the recently formed programme and why, as industry leaders, they are looking to drive more awareness of sports turf being a viable career path.

“It’s really unique, especially in football,” he told LCFC TV, speaking from the Club’s training base. “It was set up by the Football Club as a hub for the sports turf industry. It’s here to support apprentices, it’s here for the community, it’s here to advance our knowledge and our technical understanding of sports turf and ultimately give people opportunities to further their career.

“Sports turf is a fantastic industry and people usually stumble upon it as a career option. One of the things we want to do is make it an aspirational career choice, so people choose to come into it. Working in a facility like this, they do get passionate, and they can see what sports turf is all about. It becomes a career, not just a job.”

“To be able to get people to aspire to come into the industry is fantastic.”

The equipment available to use within the facilities allows students to develop a well-rounded knowledge and experience of many areas within what is a complex, demanding, but also rewarding line of work.

He continued: “We’re looking at giving added value to these apprenticeships. So, when you come to Leicester City’s Sports Turf Academy, you’ll get to do a whole range of things. Obviously what is within the qualification, but we also want to add things so at the end of it people have lots of experience from what they’ve learned and the fantastic facilities and machinery that we’ve got here.”

One of those who has benefitted from the course is Apprentice Groundsman Flynn Good, who is currently studying his level two apprenticeship at Myerscough College.

He discussed how starting the qualification has enabled him to experience different sides of the industry that would not have been possible without the Sports Turf Academy, taking on board key aspects that will stand him in good stead for the future.

“It’s a brilliant apprenticeship,” Flynn began. “I’ve always been interested in sports turf, and I volunteered at my local club and just fell it into. It’s great to be in a professional environment.

“From the gardens to the green areas, to the golf course, it’s a bit of everything. It varies so most days we are mowing and marking, but then we have the odd, more finer detail jobs like edging and weeding. It was a challenge when I first started.

“But it’s second to none, it’s amazing to work in an award-winning team. This is the leading Academy in the industry and it’s absolutely brilliant to have Jonathan Knowles on site and his scientific side of things. I’m learning lots of things that I would never have thought went into the pitches. You can tell how good it is and it’s so rewarding.”

One of those lesser-known areas that goes into the planning and renovation of pitches is the use of experiments in the laboratory, to discover new ways of applying technology to the industry, as explained by First Assistant Pitch Manager, Joe Lancaster.

“In the laboratory we have on site,” he explained, “the doctor will carry out trials to see what we can do differently out on the pitches to get the best quality surfaces we can, whether that be for football, for gardens or for the golf course greens.

“It helps us make decisions, not just at Leicester, but they will be available for everyone within the industry to help them adapt and change the way they maintain sports turf.”

Another benefit to the wider sports turf community is assisting with the development of grassroots pitches, which is a part of the Sports Turf Academy's remit, not just focusing on their own sites.

According to Apprentice Sports Turf Operative Jack Beal, the opportunity to showcase their work during the annual Grounds Week event is one which they relish, in order to recruit new people to the job and also help those further down in the pyramid to improve working practices.

“Getting involved at 14 was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” he admitted. “I’m here now working at one of the leading facilities in the world and to encourage more younger people to do that would be huge.

“Looking at grassroots pitches over the winter period, there’s a demand for more people to get involved and learn, to make everything better as a whole. It’s such an important initiative to raise those standards across the board and help benefit people in their career.”

Jack also spoke about the details and intricacies that make up what becomes a slick pitch for Leicester City teams to use on a training or match day, as well as the maintenance of the grounds and golf course.

He added: “We’ve got the lawns at different heights of cut from the pitches, but within the pitches themselves, the Under-14s’ pitch might be cut two or three millimetres higher than the first-team grass pitches. Then you’ve got the golf greens, which are completely different.

“There are different practices that go into them like rolling and the differences between the rough and the semi-rough, the tees – there’s so much that goes on across the whole site.

“With it being so big, there’s stuff going on inside the buildings as well and there is a lot of pressure and expectation. It’s a challenge that I relish and a pinch-me moment driving in every day, it’s something to behold.

“It’s almost a dream come true to be here with the facilities that we’ve got and the people and the access to development that I’ve got around me is just superb. We have guys that set standards at the top and that’s filtered down. We always work to those. The togetherness and the work ethic within the group is phenomenal.”

Joe, who studied his NVQ Level 3 at the Academy, shares Jack’s enthusiasm about the initiative and also Grounds Week, to educate others on the value of the work done by the team on a daily basis.

He commented: “It’s a week where all grounds staff get an opportunity to share just what we really do within this industry. Some people may just see it as cutting grass each day, but it’s completely different to what everyone perceives it as.

“The range of jobs we have, from spraying to repair and renovation, there’s so much to it. It gives a chance for us to show the amazing work produced.

“I really enjoyed completing the course. I learned a lot about the supervisor role within the sports turf industry and balancing your time between staff, projects and work. Working in a facility like this, where we’ve got the doctor on site, it really helps.

“What interested me was the chance to progress within this industry and produce the best surface I can for the football team. I came to Leicester, and I realised that this Football Club is so keen in developing grounds staff.

“It blows you away to take in what we’ve got here, even though you’re here every day. The facilities, the kit we have, it’s top of the range equipment that we use, which makes our job easier and more efficient. We’ve got a great team too.

“It’s an exciting challenge, understanding what we can achieve at Leicester City as one of the first to produce something like this with the Sports Turf Academy. I’ve never been somewhere with so many areas and departments, but all under one roof.

“It’s exciting to see where it will take us in the future, we’re only just beginning really.”

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