Pastures new

Scott MacCallum catches up with a man whose CV covers not only most facets of the industry but also some of the biggest names. But now David Roberts is setting off on a whole new direction, which is aimed at helping many fellow groundspeople

If there is one man in our industry for whom the saying “You never know what the future brings” could have been written, that man must be David Roberts.

His career has taken him all the way from Laurie McMenemy’s unique garden, on to Southampton Football Club, then Charterhouse School, more recently Liverpool Football Club, and now Portugal’s wonderful sun-soaked Algarve, with a completely new venture, which, if past experience is to be a guide, will be a huge success.

“It’s an interesting one. It’s just the way my career developed. It comes down to lucky breaks sometimes. Right place, right time,” said David, as he spoke via Zoom, direct from his apartment.

It says a massive amount about David’s desire to take what chances present themselves that he has given up one of the most sought-after jobs in all turf management to take on his new challenge, but the experience and skills that he has acquired over the last 30 years make him wellequipped for his next chapter.

David’s partner, Jan Felton, founded Training Unlimited 20 years ago, a company which facilitates training in all areas of professional life across the UK, and it was being immersed in Jan’s life, as well as his own, which planted the seed for David’s move from turf manager to trainer.

“One of my real frustrations has been that throughout my career there isn’t an obvious training path to go through. You can do your Level 2 and your Level 3 and then, if you wanted to develop further, you had Level 4, but that is mainly management. So there seemed to be some gaps – the bits that as a Stadium Manager I found frustrating because I couldn’t find those courses. It is just a niche market we operate in.

“I had guys working for me, wanting to progress, but I couldn’t find courses for them. So, Jan said why don’t we set up and do our own training courses.

“That was all well and good, but I couldn’t work for another company and start this new venture at the same time. So, I decided that I had to stop working for Liverpool and concentrate on providing training for the industry,” explained David, with a mixture of reluctance and trepidation.

He is pleased that he will be adding to current training and education and not stepping on toes, and he is extremely complimentary about the courses that the GMA run. He also has high hopes for Leicester City’s Sports Turf Academy, set up by John Ledwidge.

“Leicester’s Academy is going to be absolutely brilliant for the industry, but I’m hopeful that I will be able to add another dimension to it. For example, I’m currently writing courses on “Grow lights” “Nutrition” and “Understanding Soil Analysis”, while I’m going to do a series of short courses on “Know your Enemy” covering pests and diseases, life cycles, cultural and chemical control.

David plans to deliver the courses virtually having experienced how new forms of communication have developed through Covid.

“Face to face is always the best, but you and I are talking over Zoom now and two years ago we wouldn’t even have considered doing an interview this way. Covid has changed the way we communicate and talk, and I think it will be easy for me to deliver training this way as I wouldn’t want them to be longer than a half day.

“I can bring up Powerpoint, show slides and provide course notes to be taken away at the end,” said David, who is pleased that his early soundings within the industry have returned positive feedback.

“I’m hoping to be able to present to Grounds Managers and Groundsmen a whole set of courses that if their guys are keen and ambitious and want to learn that I’ll be able to fine tune, based on 40 years of experience in the industry – I have amassed some knowledge!”

Ah, that knowledge, not to mention that experience.

All the way from Laurie McMenemy’s chalk pit garden to Jurgen Klopp’s wonderful Liverpool and the iconic Anfield Stadium and the state-of-theart AXA training facility.

That’s right. It all started in the garden of one of English football’s larger than life personalities.

“I was doing contracting work at the time and when I learned that Laurie McMenemy’s gardener was having a hip operation, I was a bit cheeky and asked him if he wanted a hand with his garden while his gardener got back on his feet. I went in there and sorted out his lawn – it was a bit of a mess.”

YOU CAN DO YOUR LEVEL 2 AND YOUR LEVEL 3 AND THEN… YOU HAD LEVEL 4, BUT THAT IS MAINLY MANAGEMENT. SO THERE SEEMED TO BE SOME GAPS – THE BITS THAT AS A STADIUM MANAGER I FOUND FRUSTRATING…

Laurie was obviously impressed as out of the blue came the offer that set David on a wonderful road.

“He said that the groundsman had been sacked at The Dell. Would I interview for it?” revealed David.

“His garden was unique, in a chalk pit surrounded by 20 foot high cliffs of chalk, and he probably thought if he can grow grass in a chalk pit he can grow grass at The Dell!”

David went for the interview, was offered the job and joined the small team. He was looking after the stadium and two, including Graham Mills, who is still at Southampton, looked after the training ground.

He was on hand to managing the move from The Dell to the new St Mary’s Stadium and new training ground and his team grew. And what a team he nurtured at Southampton.

Included among them were two men who have risen to the top two Grounds’ Manager positions with the FA. Karl Standley, who now looks after Wembley, and Andy Gray, who took on St George’s Park last year, both of whom have wonderful things to say about their ex-boss.

“It is really satisfying to see them succeed in their careers. They’ve done it off their own bats. At interview you could tell that there was something about them, that character and the fact that they were keen to learn. They asked the right questions, soaked up everything and challenged me, which was great.

“You feel like a proud father, and it is good to have been part of their careers and given them their first opportunities. But they have both done the rest themselves.”

Success off the pitch, and the move to the superb St Mary’s ground, with which he was heavily involved in the design and construction of the pitch and the training ground, was not mirrored on the pitch itself. Relegation from the Premier League was a key moment for David.

“Around two years after moving to St Mary’s the club were relegated and fell into financial problems. I’d been at Southampton for 13 years at the time and I’d seen at other clubs that following relegation and administration that roles in middle management, jobs like mine, would end up going. So I was keeping an eye on what jobs were around in the industry.

“Then, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Dale Gleed, Head Groundsman at Charterhouse School, who I’d only met a couple of times at industry events. He told me that he was leaving the school and that he had put my name forward for the job.

“I said that it wasn’t something I’d ever considered, but that I’d go up and have a look at it.

“I’d never been there in my life but as soon as I drove through the gate I was just hit by this wow factor. The grounds are great, the buildings are stunning and it’s just like walking into Hogwarts. It’s dripping with history.”

The school has 250 acres of land, with a nine hole golf course and, unusually for a school of its stature, football rather than rugby was their thing. They’d won the FA Cup in 1881, when it was an amateur sport, and they were very proud of their football heritage. That said they also had nine cricket squares and hockey was a major sport too.

“It was a whole set of new challenges for me. The gardens were incredible, and I had to manage the garden team, as well as the grounds team, and the 80 acres of ancient woodland,” said David, who added that the job also came with a house, an added bonus.

“It all happened just at the right time for me. In the end I had nine years at Charterhouse and enjoyed it so much. The one difference from being at a football club was that, when I started, they said we are going to build two new hockey pitches. I said right I’ll get on to it, speak with contractors and get some tenders in. They said no, no, we’re talking about in five years’ time. In football, it would be wanted straight away, or sooner.”

It was a great life, but after nine years David realised something was missing.

“I was missing football. We’d keep the school looking immaculate, but then once a year we’d have a big open day and have everything absolutely perfect and we’d pull out all the stops, while we’d have the big schools, like Eton and Harrow, come to play and we’d have to be on our A Game. But it wasn’t like doing a Premier League game.”

So, and again, as seems to have been the case with David, he was put up for a job without his knowledge – surely a benefit of being known as one of life’s good guys, as well as one of life’s capable guys.

“Right place, right time again. Paul Burgess phone me up and said that he’d put my name forward for the Liverpool job. I was shocked by that, but not long after I’d put the phone down I got a call from Liverpool asking me to go up for an interview.

“I’d been out of the game for a while, although I’d been keeping in touch with the likes of Darren Baldwin, Steve Braddock, Bruce Elliot and Andy Gray, at Southampton, who were telling me about the latest challenges and pressures they were dealing with. But I hadn’t been doing it myself for a number of years, so I felt the chances of me getting the job were slim. To be offered the job was a real shock.”

Terry Forsyth had been at Liverpool for 43 years and had built an excellent team around him with Anfield, The Academy and the Melwood training ground both having their own Head Groundsman. David’s new position was Grounds Manager to oversee both sites.

Anfield is one of the most famous football stadiums in the world – the Kop End, and the “This is Anfield” sign above the players’ tunnel, and

ANFIELD IS ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS FOOTBALL STADIUMS IN THE WORLD – THE KOP END, AND THE “THIS IS ANFIELD” SIGN ABOVE THE PLAYERS’ TUNNEL, AND DAVID WAS IN CHARGE OF ICONIC PITCH.

David was in charge of iconic pitch.

“The place just oozes history. When you walk onto Anfield, you just feel a sense of being somewhere special,” said David, adding that, as the Grounds team, they were very much included in Manager, Jurgen Klopp’s, “One Team” philosophy for the whole club. Jurgen wants the players to appreciate that every part of the club is important to success and that staff feel they are contributing to the teams success.

On the development of the new AXA training centre and the pitches David worked closely with the Coaching team and PSD to ensure that what was built was exactly what was wanted and required.

“When we rebuilt the Anfield pitch, we changed the construction slightly and what we learned there we put into the new AXA training centre. It’s always a slight risk when you do that. In theory the changes should make things better, but you just don’t know.

“But the new AXA pitches have been phenomenal. We’ve used a lot less water than we did at Melwood and less than a third of the nutrient used at Melwood all without compromise to the quality of the grass,” he said. “Warren Scott has been pushing boundaries of managing AXA training centre to get the best most durable surface he can.”

The real frustration having been a part of the whole design and implementation of the training centre was that Covid came along and delayed the opening of it.

“We were working to a deadline, then Covid came along, and work stopped, materials were a nightmare to get in from anywhere so trying to grow grass and prepare pitches for a date that was unknown was very hard.

“It was November 2020 when we finally moved in and the pitches were almost a year old and, really, we wanted to scrape them off and start again, but if we’d done that too early the pitches might be too weak. In the end we kept with the grass we had, and scarified it to keep the organic matter out of it, and it did play ok for the first season. The players and the coaching staff were really happy with the pitches. They didn’t like the wind. but they were really happy with the pitches.”

So, with the satisfaction of a job well done, David is now living in the Algarve, always a dream for Jan and himself, with modern communications making life in Portugal compatible with running a business in the UK.

Perhaps, as he sits on his veranda enjoying a Sundowner, he will occasionally think back to Laurie McMenemy’s chalk pit garden, where it all started for him.

COVID CAME ALONG, AND WORK STOPPED, MATERIALS WERE A NIGHTMARE TO GET IN FROM ANYWHERE