Working to keep things pitch perfect

The Groundsman: Seán Moran talks to the Dublin County Board's Noel Brady who, on top of all aspects of ground care, has at the moment to contend with Brent geese.

Noel Brady moved to Dublin in 1983 from Butler's Bridge. He had just married and with his wife working in the city, he left his job as the greenkeeper in a Cavan golf club. A year later he applied for the job of Dublin County Board's groundsman, a position he has now held for 22 years.

"I've seen Dublin win one All-Ireland, which isn't a great return," he says with the nagging regret of someone who suspects his attention to detail is somehow partly to blame, "but then Cavan have won none in the same time."

Brady's beat covers Parnell Park and O'Toole Park but although the former venue is now established as Dublin's county ground that's a recent development. The current pitch was laid during the redevelopment of the ground in the mid-1990s and is a good surface but that wasn't always the case.

Having played National League matches in Croke Park for decades, Dublin were first obliged to stage a league match at Parnell Park in 1988 while the old Hill 16 was being redeveloped. Derry were the visitors on a wet afternoon.

"I remember the Monday after," says Brady, "walking down to the ground. It was like farmers had been going to a fair there was so much muck spread around the Malahide Road. The pitch wouldn't have been in great maintenance - it was more like a parkland ground - and there was no equipment for spiking.

"There's been major drainage done on it since and it's quite a dry pitch. It's playable within 12 hours, no matter how much rain falls."

Which is just as well. From a barely adequate venue for intercounty fixtures, Parnell Park is used for virtually all Dublin's home league matches, training for a variety of county teams, a flood of club matches and, as a central location, is popular for All-Ireland championships at various grades, even staging last year's Railway Cup final. Things have changed, as Brady points out: "The day after the county final in October the posts used come down and barring an emergency wouldn't go back up until March. I used be based in O'Toole Park it was so quiet here."

Last year Parnell Park hosted 368 matches, a total Brady feels is unequalled by any other county ground.

In the coming weeks Dublin's three league matches will take place at the Donnycarney ground, two of them under floodlights. Night matches have added a dimension to fixtures, drawing big crowds and generating atmosphere.

Apparently though, they make little difference to the playing surface, which isn't to say the floodlights have no impact on a groundsman.

"It leaves it very late when you're finishing. I lock up and can't leave until everyone drifts off. I'm lucky to hit the pub for the last one. The other side is that you've all day to prepare. For a league match at half-two I'd have to open up at half-ten. With an evening match you've plenty of time before you have to get down."

Brady's work involves looking after the whole venue rather than just the playing surface: "Whatever has to be done you do it, cleaning out the showers and repairing seats.

"This is certainly the busiest time of the year. It's not that there's that many big matches but the seniors will be training and the minors and under-21s want to get out on it as well. Now with lights the number of matches has gone up again.

"I'm mostly concentrating on keeping the pitch spiked. Over the last couple of weeks I resodded the goalmouth. You should leave it for a fortnight afterwards but that's not always available. The drainage is good but as soon as you get a dry fortnight the pitch gets too hard. Irrigation work starts as soon as spring finishes. We have a well here at the end of the county board building and that pumps into a storage tank, which runs the irrigator."

Unlike the popular Prunty pitches, which are sand-based and give good drainage during the winter, Parnell Park is an old-fashioned soil pitch, which Brady believes gives a better surface during the high season. "In summer I think a soil pitch is better. The grass is better. A sand-based pitch is inclined to be hard."

Pitch maintenance covers a host of concerns and before followers from Monaghan, Offaly and Mayo arrive in the coming weeks, there are less welcome visitors.

"The worst thing at the moment is the Brent geese. Up the middle of the pitch is very loose. They eat the grass and pull it up by the roots. Then it comes out the other end and the pitch gets covered in bird crap. I suppose you could use it as fertiliser but I'd prefer to buy it in a bag."