Winning the turf war

Earli­er this year, my 14-year-old son com­pleted his second suc­cess­ive sea­son of col­lege foot­ball with no matches can­celled. His older broth­er, five years his seni­or, would fre­quently have sea­sons with over 50 per­cent of matches called off.

In 2007, the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil real­ised that it had a major issue on its hands regard­ing sports­fields pro­vi­sion. Fields were under grow­ing pres­sure mainly as a res­ult of increas­ing demand from sports groups — par­tic­u­larly foot­ball. Wellington’s high annu­al rain­fall, poor soils, large num­ber of fields built on former land­fills with poor drain­age and well-doc­u­mented health haz­ards, and lack of avail­able flat land for new fields had cre­ated a real problem.

Dur­ing 2008, some foot­ball youth grades ended up play­ing only six times dur­ing the sea­son (between April and late August). Sat­urday seni­or foot­ball fix­tures could not be com­pleted on ten occa­sions. Dur­ing that same winter all juni­or rugby was can­celled sev­en times (54% of games), and there were 43 seni­or grade can­cel­la­tions dur­ing the sea­son. These can­cel­la­tions occurred on nine play­ing days between 3 May and 9 August.

So in both Wel­ling­ton and the Hutt Val­ley a pro­ject was put in place to lay arti­fi­cial pitches, accom­pan­ied by flood­light­ing, which has revolu­tion­ised juni­or and ama­teur sport in the region.

In Wel­ling­ton alone, start­ing with Nairn­ville Park in 2009, there have been sev­en arti­fi­cial pitches built, includ­ing two fun­ded in part­ner­ship with Wel­ling­ton Col­lege and St Patrick’s Col­lege. These have revolu­tion­ised sports par­ti­cip­a­tion across the city. Not only are they used extens­ively dur­ing the day and at night on week­ends, they are also used for week­day even­ing train­ing sessions.

For example, foot­ball is using the fields for its nurs­ery grade, juni­or, seni­or, social, mas­ters and rep­res­ent­at­ive play­ers. Inter­na­tion­al rugby teams and the Wel­ling­ton Phoenix have also trained on these sur­faces. The Nation­al Rippa Rugby tour­na­ments and a New Zea­l­and Sec­ond­ary Schools Girls’ Foot­ball tour­na­ment have been held in Wel­ling­ton, some­thing pre­vi­ously inconceivable.

Dur­ing one week alone in July 2011, use of the two arti­fi­cial sports­fields at Wake­field Park amoun­ted to 134 hours, almost match­ing the usage dur­ing the entire five-month winter peri­od on the two nat­ur­al grass fields at the same ven­ue in 2010 (138 hours).

Hav­ing these arti­fi­cial pitches in place has the oth­er side effect of mak­ing it easi­er to main­tain the grass fields. No longer are they used all day on a Sat­urday, mean­ing a gradu­al des­cent into a mud bath with little time for reju­ven­a­tion by the fol­low­ing week­end. Now they can be treated with care. The sight of Karori Park, for example, look­ing pristine at the begin­ning of Septem­ber was unthink­able a few years ago.

This trans­form­a­tion has not been cheap, but it has been a worth­while invest­ment, and Wel­ling­ton is so much rich­er for it.

About Graeme Beasley

One of those rare people: a born and bred Wel­ling­to­ni­an. And enough of a Wel­ling­to­ni­an to know how to pro­nounce Majoribanks Street. Has a soft spot for the Makara wind farm, the south coast and the buck­et foun­tain, but refuses to toot the horn in the Mt Vic­tor­ia tun­nel. Very famil­i­ar in hand­ling the full range of emo­tions gen­er­ated by sup­port­ing Wel­ling­ton sports team. Works in IT.

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