Bristol may have been bathed in glorious sunshine for several weeks now but for Dan Sparks, Bristol Sport Group's Grounds Manager, while there’s a slight reluctance in his voice to admit it, he’s hoping for more than a little rain over the summer months.
When supporters return to Ashton Gate over the weekend of August 5, with Bristol City likely to be at home for the start of the Championship season as the Balloon Fiesta falls on the following weekend, the stadium will look much the same but, at the same time, will be fundamentally different.
For the first time in nine years, the decision has been made to completely renovate the pitch, removing the old hybrid grass that was installed for the start of the 2014/15 season and replace it with a newer, hopefully more durable product.
The reasoning is two-fold, the previous material that held together the turf was beginning to snap and crack - 12 months ahead of its best before date - and while the club could have persevered with it, as players started to lose their footing and the general surface began to deteriorate it made sense for a change.
Alongside that is the prospect of Ashton Gate being used as a venue for Bristol City - senior and Under-21 sides - Bristol Bears and Bristol City Women next season, adding around 15 more matches to the schedule.
“Ten years was the target so we weren’t hopefully going to do it until next year but unfortunately we’ve seen a massive drop-off in stability and integrity of the product; it had turned brittle and you could snap it. And obviously with a new material, there’s no snapping going to happen,” Sparks tells Bristol Live.
“That was when the players were planting their feet and the stability was all-but gone. It was discussed, raised and this summer was decided as when the new product would go in.
“We noticed there were quite chunky-sized divots which we shouldn’t see because the integrity of the fibres should hold. Where a player plants their foot should remain good but in the autumn we noticed players were struggling a little bit, looked into it a bit more, took some test samples sent away and, as the season and winter went on, it became more and more evident that we possibly had a problem that we needed to investigate further.
“We’re very grateful to the Lansdown family for supporting and backing us with this project.”
“It looks like Weston beach” was the description from one Bristol City club official as we were greeted at the door of Ashton Gate earlier this week to see the current state of the pitch.
On Wednesday, the media department also used the opportunity for the new backdrop at BS3 to form the basis for Haydon Roberts’ beach-themed video reveal. A home from home for the Brighton-born and raised defender.
The process began almost immediately after the Arctic Monkeys concert on May 29, with around two days required to clear the stage before the contractors rolled in to dig up the old pitch, taking a further five days.
We’re now at the stage whereby a 50mm sand-based “binding layer” is being placed to both aid drainage through the new turf but also retain nutrients for the grass to thrive, with a “root zone” to be added.
City, like nearly all clubs, use a hybrid material, in their case HERO grass by County Turf, which is a combination of artificial grass which sits inside a mesh like frame allowing the real grass to then grow through alongside it.
The new polyethylene fibres - replacing propylene ones - stand at 60mm, with 40mm below the surface and 20mm above. The real grass is then allowed to grow to 25mm before being regularly cut throughout the season to keep it at that specific length.
Once it’s all grown through it’s 95 per cent real grass to five per cent artificial. Sparks assures us that’s based not on an estimate, but on ground staff literally counting the number of fibres in a specific patch of turf to determine the split, such is the attention to detail in the industry.
Seeding will commence next week, allowing for a six-week growing period which takes the club up to that first weekend of the 2023/24 campaign with the first visitors to Ashton Gate to be determined next Thursday at 9am.
As Sparks admits, it’s a tight timescale, and little if no margin for error, but while this is a major project, it’s also a routine operation to an extent, the only difference being the importance of it and the grandeur of the surroundings.
Similar work has been carried out earlier in the summer at the High Performance Centre, also allowing for that six-week growing period which will make the pitches ready for when pre-season begins a week on Monday.
As for the prospect of another hot and dry summer like last year, don’t worry the Ashton Gate irrigation system is such that even if a drop of rain fails to fall over the next seven weeks, the new surface will be suitably watered.
“It’s a nine-week programme, from the three-week contractor period, and seeding the ground, to first use. It is very tight and there isn’t any wiggle room but the only thing that could go wrong is the weather and luckily that’s been on board so far,” Sparks, a lifelong City fan who’s been with the club for 12 years, adds.
“(Ideally) dry until the end of next week… then it can rain all it wants. We have irrigation if it doesn’t rain but it’s more beneficial if it rains,” he adds when asked for the perfect weather conditions.
Nigel Pearson bemoaned the state of some opposition pitches last season, most notably Preston North End’s Deepdale, and while the quality may vary up and down the country - with conditions very different in the north west, compared to the West Country - ground staff are known to share ideas and thoughts on how to achieve the best standard of surface.
The John Beck-type days of the early 1990s, where the former Cambridge United manager would demand the grass to be grown longer in the corners at Abbey Stadium, enabling the ball to stick in the channels when his defenders would lump it forward are no more. Ultimately the modern day manager desires the same thing.
“In this day and age they want a fast pitch, wet so the ball zips across the surface,” Sparks said. “Every manager plays that way. Gone are the days of people growing the grass really long and having it really dry to lump up to a big centre forward because players are much more athletic now. The game has just kind of gone that way, it’s just about making it as fast and quick as possible for the players.”
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