Because of unanticipated field maintenance, tomorrow's LOVEFEST has been moved from JF O'Grady Fields at Fairfield to AJSC Soccer Fields off Baron St in Greenslopes (where BUML and BPL are played).
Which gives us an opportunity to illuminate ye readers on the adventures of field maintenance in Brisbane.
So each year for the past many years, Ultimate around this time of the year has been heavily disrupted by a mysterious thing called "field maintenance", which typically involves the seemingly sudden closure of fields. "Why is this so?" many Ulti-players have screamed. "Why am I missing out on many precious weeks of League play at this gorgeous time of year!?"
Most of the winter sports that we hire fields from are finishing at this time of year, and a few of the otherwise-exhausted volunteers who manage the soccer and footy fields tend to see their fields at the end of the season as very beaten up compared to the start of the season, so they start to think about doing a bit of field maintenance.
Field maintenance can involve driving a spiky tractor over the grass to let some air in, spreading topsoil or sand or fertiliser over the fields, watering them heavily, laying new turf on particularly damaged areas (such as goal-mouths) or just stopping anyone from using them at all and giving them a rest. Doing it around now gives the soccer and footy fields a break over summer, when soccer and footy players assume nobody else would be silly enough to go running around in the sun (obviously not many of them have met Ultimate players).
Many of the fields around Brisbane are owned by the Brisbane City Council, but are on long term lease to use to various sports clubs. Two that QUDA deals with regularly are the Annerley Junior Soccer Club (AJSC, and operators of the AJSC Fields), and the Brisbane Rugby League Referees Association (operators of the JF O'Grady Fields).
Brisbane City Council offers "free" topsoiling/topsanding to the field operators (for the Council, this just maintains the value of their (and its ratepayers') asset. The catch is the Council wants to do this cheaply, so Clubs essentially provide Council with the last date of their winter season, and Council does the work when it can after that (and this can be any time - say there's a big storm, then their workers will be busy for the week with the cleanup, so they won't do any field work that week).
This whole "any time" thing has caught Ultimate out a few times in the past, and its got us again this weekend with Lovefest. The JFOG folks took our booking months ago and figured we'd be fine, but they finished their season (the Refs use the fields for their training) two weeks ago, and last week the Council dumped a kilo-metric ass-load of sand on the fields (as those playing the Reckless day will attest). The Council should follow this up with water-trucks, but apparently they've had other things on.
So JFOG isn't in the best shape, and as part of QUDA's efforts to have excellent relationships with its field providers, we're arranged to move Lovefest to AJSC. The JFOG operators didn't really want us on the fields, but they were happy to keep their commitment to hire it to us, but its kept them happy that we've found somewhere else, and we're happy because we'll probably have a better day (and know that JFOG will be in good condition in the future).
Meanwhile, and fortunately for those who play BPL and BUML at the Annerley Junior Soccer Fields, this year things for Leagues won't be as disrupted as previous years, where there have been sudden stoppages of 3-4 weeks of League.
AJSC and the Annerley Recreation Club (who sit above the Juniors and Seniors), have decided to do their own maintenance this year, rather than rely on the Council. This is at least partly because the soccer clubs are starting to recognise Ultimate is an important partner (or at least, as an important customer) and they are more inclined these days to work with us on this (this is thanks to QUDA's and the League Directors efforts to improve the information flows between the organisations).
So this year AJSC are planning to close one of their soccer fields for a month, and let us keep playing on the other one, and then switch that over. Which means that BUML and BPL will be able to continue through the period (although with a little bit of less space for BUML).
So, there's some insight into what happens in the backrooms of this time of year, and perhaps why there's a few little changes happening to our year-around sport, as the other (lamer of course) sports try to deal with the change of season.
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