Lordswood Youth FC have been on a journey over the last couple of years to improve the standard of the pitches they use and have seen some amazing results in a short space of time. 

Following PitchPower assessments on their three sites two years ago, Lordswood Leisure Centre, Lordswood Sports and Social Club and Swingate Primary School, the resulting reports provided by the Grounds Management Association concluded that all 12 of the pitches were of a ‘poor’ or ‘basic’ standard. 

The community pitches across the three sites collectively provide home ground pitch provision to 17 teams from Lordswood Youth and a further six from Lordswood FC who also use the social club site.

After receiving the PitchPower assessment reports, Lordswood Youth applied for a grant from the Football Foundation’s Grass Pitch Maintenance Fund and received £61,440 to improve the leisure centre, therefore enrolling on a programme that enables the club to engage external contractors to undertake enhanced maintenance operations recommended in the PitchPower report.      

Less than a year into the programme, all seven of the pitches on the site were graded as ‘good’. 

Seeing how quickly this could be achieved, the club proceeded to apply to the same fund for both the primary school and the social club sites, which resulted in a further £25,600 and £32,000 for each site respectively. Again, less than a year on from the investment programme starting and every pitch on the two sites has now been assessed as at least ‘good’, with one rated as ‘advanced’. 

The leisure centre site is now into its second year of the programme and now has three ‘good’ pitches and four ‘advanced’ pitches, an incredible transformation considering a little under two years ago three pitches were basic and four were rated as ‘poor’.

This means that now overall the three sites have all 12 pitches at a ‘good’ standard or above – fantastic effort and commitment from Lordswood Youth to provide good quality pitches for their players.

Why are good quality pitches so important? The quality of the experience for players is vastly improved and safer on a ‘good’ quality pitch, which results in greater enjoyment and satisfaction from the game and the likelihood of greater retention of participants. 

'Good’ quality pitches also have fewer cancelled fixtures – a common frustration for players during the wet part of the season – and they also enable a greater carrying capacity than a ‘basic’ or ‘poor’ pitch, meaning more games per week can be played on the surface without significant damage to the turf.  

Start your pitch improvement journey today by contacting Kent FA Facility and Investment Lead, Aidan Ainsley at Aidan.Ainsley@KentFA.com.