Grantham Town are in a race against time to get pitch playable again

Grantham Town are caught up in a race against time to get their pitch repaired after an infestation of chafer grubs came to a head on Monday.

The urgent repair work has begun already with the Northern Premier League giving the Gingerbreads just four weeks to have the pitch back in commission.

The chafer grubs themselves – the larvae of cockchafer beetles – have been eating the roots of the grass, making it die off and become scrubby and patchy.

If that was not bad enough, the pitch was then damaged further by birds, such as crows, digging it up to get to the grubs, leaving large bare patches of ground.

Monday’s scheduled fixture against Worksop Town had to be postponed, such was the state of the pitch at The Meres after the weekend, whilst tomorrow’s home FA Cup tie has been changed to an away game at their opponents Rugby Town.

Local sports pitch specialists Fineturf have been brought in to carry out the work and began first thing on Wednesday, with the estimated cost of repairs running into the tens of thousands of pounds over a time line of six weeks – awkwardly at odds with the league’s four week deadline.

Grantham Town manager Matt Chatfield said the repair work is beginning with the whole pitch being scarified: “What we ideally would have wanted is to rip the pitch up to get a guarantee that we can get all these chafer grubs off the pitch. But unfortunately, with the time of year, if we did that we wouldn’t be able to guarantee there’d be enough grass on the pitch to continue the season.

“So, the next best thing is to scarify and take up all the top layer, basically the grass that’s already dead. We might have thought that it was good on top but there’s no roots underneath. Take all that up.

“The whole pitch will be bare, so they are resurfacing the whole of the top.

“The scarifier will go in deep and pick out everything dead, it’ll get rid of everything that’s dead or ruined. From then on it’s just a race against time to get it growing.”

And it truly is a race with the work estimated to take six weeks and the league wanting it ready two weeks sooner.

Chatfield said: “The league have only given us four weeks so we’ve got to hope that within four weeks we might be able to get back on it. If not, we might have to ground share for the next week or so while we’re still waiting for the grass to be at an adequate length to play on.”

He said the club has not yet made any approaches to clubs about ground sharing, whilst the Academy team and the under-19s are already in talks with Harrowby United.

Chatfield said they were expecting contractors Fineturf to give an assessment today (Friday) on how they think the repairs are going and how bad the damage really is.

He said: “They’ve rung us again this morning (Thursday) and they’ve said that they’ve got to do more than what they said they’ve got to, so it’s obviously going to be worse than what we think it is.”

Training has not been impacted as the Gingerbreads do not train on the match pitch, but Chatfield said he was also concerned about the financial damage to the club due to not having home games, such as loss of revenue from food and drink and, of course, gate receipts.

Grantham Town are hoping to have talks with South Kesteven District Council, which owns the football stadium, with regards to the financial situation.

Chatfield said: “At the moment, it’s all down to how quick we can get things done.

“We’ve had to stump up the initial cost to get it done the next day. And then, from there, it’s then trying to talk to the council to see what they can do to help us out, because yes it’s a council run pitch but we do all the maintenance on it.

“The council don’t do any maintenance on the pitch, we do it all, we pay for everything.

“And it’s now talking to them and see what we can do.”

Understandably concerned with the club's plight, Grantham Town Supporters Club have set up a gofundme fundraising page www.gofundme.com/f/the-pitch-needs-repairing-quick which has already received more than £7,500 in its first three days.

Chatfield said: “What we can’t expect is this to be paid for by the fans. We hope that the council and other corporate events and things like that will help towards it.

“But at the moment, you can see how good the fans are being. It’s just astonishing, every time I get to this club.

“You don’t realise how much the fans are an everyday occurrence at this club. They are a constant and it blows me away, every away game, every home game, and every time something like this happens. The fans are amazing.”

Turning his attention to tomorrow’s FA Cup First Qualifying Round tie at Rugby Town, Chatfield said he was disappointed it was not being played at The Meres due to the pitch crisis.

He said: “I don’t like to lose home advantage, especially in the FA Cup. It’s a massive game for the club. But the lads will do everything they can to win that game of football.

“This season, we’ve got this mentality that we will not be beat. There’s got to be a good team out there to beat us.”