My name's Peter Ashworth I'm Head groundsman at Preston North End Football Club we're in
the Championship in the EFL overlooking overseeing four fibre-sand pitches at
our first team training ground we also have Deepdale which is a fibre sand pitch
and then we have four pitches down at our youth training centre which is one fibre sand pitch
three soil pitches I've got a team of six seven including myself which is made up of
Dean Ash, Callum Mcgrady, Sam Newton, John Paul Mcavoy, Harry Duckworth and Luke Mcdonald. We have
a couple of lads full-time at the first team training ground a lad based up at our youth team
training ground another lad based at Deepdale and then we have a couple of apprentices who kind of
float between the areas and myself I float around all three sites to help out as and when needed.
As you can see we've got a couple of the electric Allett Mowers (cylinder mowers)
down at our first team training ground and two of the electric Uplifts based at this training
ground as well. We do use them between Deepdale and here for cleaning up after match days with
the uplifts especially and we also do sometimes take the cylinders up to the ground if needs be.
Yeah so we decided when we took this site on a couple years ago
the club invested in it and obviously there was a bit of a budget to buy some new machinery so
obviously batteries was the kind of up-and-coming thing in terms of mowing so we trialled a few
different varieties but the Allett's in terms of budget and ease of use we thought were the
best for this so I put it to the club and said listen this is going to be the future of mowing
in terms of using batteries rather than petrol etc and cheaper to run once we've got them.
So luckily the club went with it they fit into our budget and in terms of quietness when cutting
you know generally we can crack on cutting while they're out training although sometimes not but
a lot of the time we can still cut compared to with the petrol mowers. Obviously there's a lot
less vibration and in terms of quality we've got the cassettes as well that we can take in and out
so we've got the rake cassettes so far they've been a really good addition to our equipment.
Yeah so with this mower in terms of ease of use obviously the height of cut is
pretty straight forward and setting the cut is really simple you've just got the two dials on
the front quick twist and you're raising the roller up and down it's very straightforward.
Putting the batteries in now is an absolute doddle and obviously if you do need to change
during cutting if you'd ran you can do that no problems there's no fuel spillages if you're
pouring fuel into them like you would with a petrol mower no risk of burning on the grass
and they're just again they're nice and quiet to use they're nice and light,
easy to handle and you've got little features like the slow down button just for when you're turning
at the ends if you in any tight positions you can just slow the mower down instantly
just to help you turn into your next cut. So a recent addition we bought the turf rake cassette
and we've actually got another one on order so we've got two so fingers crossed
once we can get two mowers going after training we can probably clean up a couple of pitches in
two to three hours with two lads and we'll use it just to clean out the surface lightly, get rid of
any debris that might be in the surface and also clean up any bits that have been used that have
come off the boots etc from training so it's kind of doing a couple of jobs in one we'll use it to
clean up after training and also just cleaning out the actually in the surface nice and lightly.
So yeah we've also got a couple of the Uplifts battery mowers which we use mainly just for
cleaning up after training just the ease of use again we've got the brush on the front if
you just want to loosen any debris before vaccing it up the suction is really good
we can go quite fast with them as well and obviously two mowers we can clean a pitch off
in around an hour mark which is good up at the stadium as well especially on a night match when
everyone wants to get home you know we can we've only got a small staff so using smaller mowers
isn't really viable so get a couple of these going or even the day after one lad can vac off and it's
not too much of a chore unlike with a little rotary mower but again yeah it's ease of use
with the battery changes no fuel again you've got the slow down button for turning if there's
any obstacles but yeah it really does suck up a good amount leaves little debris left on the pitch