Belle Vue groundsman Steve Dutton has been named Super League groundsman of the year! about time! never could understand how the Leeds groundsmen have won it before with the state of the headingley pitch for most of the year!
Anyway well done all at Belle Vue who make the pitch, one of the best playing surfaces in the country.

Is he the guy who walks around the City centre with a radio to his ear?

Didn't he win it a couple of years ago?

To be fair to the Leeds bloke, he has to contend with Rugby Union and his pitch been used as a car park for the cricket

and it's in Leeds

Isn't $*** good for the soil and grass and such fourth? Our pitch has had loads on it this year...

I have to say that I think the Cas pitch has always looked as good as , if not better than, than the wakefield pitch.

Yeh, I seem to remember it having its own paddling pool down the dug out touch line one year when you were on Sky. Belle Vue is the best pitch in the league bar none - simples

Congratulations to Steve Dutton, by far the best pitch in SL. A pity we can't take it to Newmarket.

A lot of spades and a few flat bed trucks?

Aye Leeds did play at BV last season a last we have found a use for them

I'm sure I'd read somewhere that we are

You can guarantee that any pitch at Newmarket will not be as good thanks to Belle Vue being open to the elements - a great advantage over most grounds!

it would be ideal I'm sure it would be far cheaper to get ours cut up than purchase else where in roll form, the other option is seeding it from new but I'm not sure how long that would take to form a good ground surface,

there is also going to be the pitch outside the stadium as well

I believe the secret of the pitch, besides having a good groundsman, isn't the top few inches but the subsoil etc. laid down years and years ago. I seem to remember the power station had something to do with it, imported soil, coke, shale etc.

Well done to steve (the bath) as far as I am concered its always looked the best for a couple of years now !!
I agree its a shame that we can not take it to the new stadium !!

The secret is good drainage and Belle Vue has some superb drains, They are massive!!!...

TRB...this is manna from heaven for you, Phil...... if anyone is in a position to comment on this one, it must be you......

and the drainage, I never seen the field flooded, heavy going yes but it always bounced back to lush green

It's not even full sized !

I hope Steve (the bath) is employed by the community Trust as groundsman at newmarket

I've heard that somewhere aswell - part of the reason that Leeds and indeed Wembley are e, is that the car parking and other events knacker the subsoil. Can't remember where I saw it though.

I've told this story before but it's worth repeating on this thread.

When we were preparing to build the hospitality suite we had a huge and very deep hole drilled out of the ground. The reason was that the anchors for the very tall yet light boxes had to be ultra solid.

A surveyor was flown in by Rovacabin to check the suitability of the ground, the guy had worked on some of the best stadia built around the world.

He took one look at the exposed foundations and declared the now visible layers of drainage as the best he had ever seen anywhere. He couldn't help shaking his head at the quality of the pitch foundation and only wished that new stadium builders would invest in the pitch and drainage to the same degree.

So much history we don't know about, all lost in the mists of time. It would be great if someone could uncover (no pun intended) the background to the building of the ground at Belle Vue.

I have always said and will continue to say that the Belle Vue pitch is the best in Super League by a long way! I do understand that it has very good drainage and indeed the story of the subsoil being power station waste is one I have also heard. It also does benefit from being by far the most open playing surface, so gets plenty of sun and air, very good for grass!

I think some of you are being a little harsh on the Headingley playing surface. Since they abandoned the under-soil heating about 5 years or so ago and deep spiked the pitch to solve the drainage issues, ironically caused by the under-soil heating having 'baked' the sub-soil, it has not been at it's best but has been (this year excluded) still generally better than the playing surfaces at Wigan, Hull & Huddersfield IMO. This year of course, no longer having functioning under-soil heating, it spent most of December January and early February covered. I think the Leeds groundsman said he was only able to uncover it for 2 days out of the whole of January! They kept it playable (only just) and indeed if it was not for these actions you would have all had to stay at home on Boxing Day! When the season started in February it looked bloody terrible but they never had to cancel a game and some credit needs to be given there.

Of course the Headingley pitch has not been relayed since the South Stand was built in the 1930's, when they did put in the under-soil heating they did it from the top and gut groves for the 'heating wires', that the system uses, to be inserted. It is these heating wires that directly heated the soil that started to cause the pitch to have drainage problem as 'baked' layer of soil formed over time and prevented water getting to the drains underneath.

The plan is to completely relay the Headingley pitch, along with a new under-soil heating system, for the opening of the new South Stand early in 2012, when we return to Headingley a few months into the season from what everyone is predicting will be Elland Road for the first few months of the 2012 season. Of course the original plan was to actual demolish the South Stand at the end of this season but GH could not sort out the planning permission in time... we all know what that is like!