SUMMER INVESTMENT IN PLAYING SURFACE ALREADY UNDERWAY

Only ten hours after the final whistle blew on the win over Celtic, contractors commenced work on the McDiarmid Park pitch’s close season renovation.

The Saints’ pitch endured an unprecedented winter of rainfall although only one match was lost to the elements and the saturated surface recovered well and certainly looked the part in last night’s televised final game.

The club’s Football Administrator Paul Smith says of the work: “Our involvement in European competition in the past four years has drastically narrowed the time window our Head Groundsman Chris Smith has had to carry out vital summer renovation work and so while we would obviously have liked to have been in the Europa League again, the fact that we’re not at least provides us with an additional two weeks and that in turn gives us scope to carry out more work than had we been playing in Europe on the 30th June.

“That said, the League Cup begins on 16th July and so in the great scheme of a full year calendar, it’s still a relatively short period of time we have available – the days of ten and eleven week closed seasons are long gone!”

By the close of play today the contractors had shaved off a specific depth of turf and over the next couple of days the remaining surface will be thoroughly worked on to aid future drainage of water. After that there will be the application of well over 100 tonnes of fibre sand before seeding takes place.

“In an ideal world we would be going deeper into the soil towards the drains but time simply does not permit that. However, the work that we can carry out will be more than we have managed in recent summers and that will certainly help. We are also speaking with the sporting surface experts about different work we can carry out in the months and years ahead which will help address this now permanent issue of shorter close seasons and wetter winters.

“Between October and February the surface had to deal with just over 26 inches of rain and snow melt – unprecedented – and we were one of several clubs who had problems. However, we’re confident that the considerable investment we are making in the current work will help greatly and we’re sure that the perfect mix of long sunny days and helpful overnight rain which we always get in summer in Scotland will bring on the new surface in leaps and bounds!”