Find out what's been happening at the Club this week as we tick off another part of project 18 and improving our club and facilities

A lot of the work at the club goes unseen by most of us. In this case its underground !

This week, contractors have been on site replacing a 35 year old drain in the trees behind the blue pitch that takes surface rainfall away from the green pitch and other areas of the site. For a while, we’ve suspected that there was a blockage resulting in rainwater backing up through the system, eventually forcing its way out on the back drive and onto the front grass pitch outfield used for cricket and football. It became very obvious that there was a problem during last winter when unusually heavy rainfall just saturated the area.

So… after some careful investigative work over the summer we took the plunge (!),and 60 metres of new 300mm piping was installed this week.

Have a look at the short video (about 40 secs in) that reveals the moment the old drain was excavated, and you can see the large 'plug' of soil and root mass as it was removed to free the blockage and the backed up water in drains and drainage chambers around the site finally manage to escape…

So we have a new drain in place and hopefully everyone, especially our football teams who play on the grass outfield during the winter will see less mud, more football and a definite improvement in pitch quality. The Green ATP should also drain more freely again and mean water can again flow through the drains that feed into the big drain replaced at the back of the blue pitch. We're also done major grass playing surface renovations in September to improve pitches and drainage. We've also invested over £100,000 in drainage on the the two grass outfield over the past 7 years including laying 10,000m of new field drains.

But…. we can only spend just over £10,000 on a new drainage (Yep that is the correct figure… £10,000 !!!), if we earn it in the first place.

Every subscription paid, every cup of coffee you buy from the club gets re-invested in grass seed, electricity, our artificial turf pitches, grass maintenance and yes…. new drainage. So please use your club for coffee, drinks, snacks, breakfast butties, bar food and a brew and help us to generate income to continue to invest in and keep improving our facilities.