We updated members on the development project at the recent AGM and here’s a summary of what was covered. A more detailed update has been saved to the club website here – https://www.pitchero.com/clubs/railwayunionhockeyclub/d/documents.html?group_id=18897
Our plans are to carry out the works across June and July 2022 with testing and handover in August 2022. We will be installing a brand-new high quality water filled playing surface (FIH Global accreditation) and new shockpad. This will provide an excellent playing surface for our adult teams, our youths and the schools using our facilities.
The chosen carpet manufacturer is Lano (https://www.lanosports.com/en/sports), who are one of the FIH’s Preferred Suppliers for artificial playing surfaces. The proposed playing surface will be similar to those installed at a number of high-profile European clubs and venues, including the Dutch National Training Centre in Utrecht, Amsterdam H&BC, Royal Herakles and HC Tigers in Belgium, Munich Olympic Park in Germany and Hampstead & Westminster HC in the UK.
Lano advise that the pitch requires less than half the watering required for other fibrillated carpet designs and still meets global hockey performance standards. This will assist the club in reducing its pitch watering requirements, a positive from a number of perspectives – environmental; sustainability and operational.
We also plan to replace the entirety of the in-situ shockpad beneath the pitch with a high quality pre-fabricated shockpad. Again, this choice has been made for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the product comes with a 25 year warranty and should therefore last two pitch lifecycles and secondly, the choice has sustainability merits as a pre-fabricated shockpad can potentially be recycled in future for alternative uses.
This is a significant financial undertaking for the hockey club and we envisage that the overall project cost is likely to be c.€470,000. Whilst we have funding in place for over half this amount and borrowing facilities available, we will be looking to minimise the commercial debt which the club takes on. We are seeking funding via a number of avenues – including member loans, pitchside commercial opportunities and donations.
The focus at the moment is on getting the works underway and completed to a high quality so that we can all enjoy a world class facility come next season.
General Committee and Pitch Implementation Workgroup
