All as we know the playing surfaces at Edinburgh oval are often stretched to capacity. Club committee members are constantly pushing our case with the university sports staff to make our home ground the highest quality possible. The sports staff on campus are just as passionate about pushing this case to the parks and gardens department and external contractors. Here is the most recent update of what’ s happening.

Field 1 is being given another month off to do more work and will be cut down significantly and a top layer taken to flatten the field. This will make it look pretty bad for a few weeks but then recover before the season. More sand and levelling of bad areas including replacing more turf in needed areas.

Field 2 will get January off as originally planned and work done to get it ready for season.

Field 3 will be returfed in required areas over Christmas closedown period and levelled

The areas between the pitches will be turfed over the access points – this will mean we have more training space and will also give us more room to move pitches around during the season rotating the heavy traffic areas in goal mouths and central circles. A request to the change in mowing to Friday has been place so the mowing and rolling is best for the weekend and we will hopefully have an answer soon.

In a recent meeting with University Sports Manager Daniel Tibbitt Parks and Gardens have identified that the maintenance has been inadequate and this is a result of the contract put in place with external contractors. They are investigating getting 2 separate contractors next time and getting a sports turf specialist that’s only job will be to look after our playing surfaces. Current contract expires at the end of this year.

Hope to update you with any improvement to Raphael park shortly.