Nathan and his team of three groundstaff tend to the pitch at the iPro, which is of a fibre sand construction complete with under soil heating and is fully irrigated. After recently taking on the head groundsman position Nathan revealed that he wanted to make a difference.


Nathan Scarff, Derby County FC’s new head groundsman

“When I first took over I was looking at making ourselves a little more self-efficient, so one of the first things I wanted to look at was seeding, more specifically, regular over sowing during the season. This is why we chose the SISIS Variseeder.

“The nice thing about the Variseeder is that it is compact - we don’t have a lot of storage space here so we actually have it on a little trolley and we roll it under the stands. It’s a really good seeder and does a cracking job.

“We tend to use the Variseeder once a month. We just clean the pitch out with brushes and spikers and then we’ll put a small drop of seed across the whole pitch,” he said.

Further enhancing his turf maintenance procedures, Nathan uses the SISIS Javelin Aer-Aid 1500, which is a tractor mounted vertical action air injection aerator. 


Aer-Aid in action

“We use the Javelin Aer-Aid every time we get a decent break in between games and that is all about trying to keep the pitch regulated in terms of how hard and how soft it is.

“The option of the air injection has proved to be invaluable to us. In a stadium environment we don’t get a lot of natural air movement or sunlight so the water movement isn’t particularly good. Unfortunately the pitch used to sit damp on a regular basis, so being able to inject the air helps prevent any problems like black layer. It’s also great for helping to reduce the compaction from using the heavier machinery on the pitch."

For general all-round maintenance Nathan also purchased the SISIS Twinplay frame which accepts a variety of different implements for use on both turf and synthetic surfaces.

“For our Twinplay frame we’ve got a spiker reel, a brush and two sets of rakes which are used for general maintenance – whether it is cleaning the pitch out, surface aeration, or just to help control any algae or thatch build-up that we might get.

“Overall they are great bits of kit and you don’t require big tractors to run them – with just a 20-25HP tractor you can utilise almost every bit of kit on the shelf that they have at SISIS,” he said.