BA Rugby simply cannot thank enough the volunteers who worked tirelessly to get Ground 3 at Vinod Patel Park ready for use.
“We had been waiting since early March for the grass to be cut by the authorities, but we couldn’t wait any longer,” BRU Secretary Gaby Kautoga explained.
“We hired a tractor to do the first cut then we had our wonderful team of helpers who worked throughout the week using brush-cutters and push lawnmowers to get the grass short enough.”
“The raking was also a huge job as the grass had been so long.”
“So we give a big, big vinaka vakalevu to the boys from Namada Youth and Sorokoba who helped Pastor Silameke and his family team.”
The photos were taken last Friday evening before the games began the next morning.
“The ground certainly proved a hit with the teams,” Kautoga said. “Some of them had asked us to leave a thin layer of hay on top as it made it softer.”
“They also requested to be allocated to Ground 3 again this week.”
It is important to note that up until the beginning of last season, Ground 3 was still a cow field that had not been used for sports in many a year.
The BRU grounds team decided to clean it up, cut it back and turn it into a rugby field.
“We had a few complaints at first from teams and spectators because it was a bit rough around the edges,” Talatala Gaby recalled. “One Top 16 team that was at the time in the INOX Trophy competition even wrote to us refusing to play on Ground 3.”
“That was a great shame. Our volunteers had done tremendous work so we could keep all our club games in the same area.”
The other noticeable change was that the rates went up to reflect the fact that Vinod Patel Park now had three grounds.
“The rates went up again this year by almost 20%, so it’s becoming expensive. That said, the Council has only been charging us for two grounds this year because Grounds 3 and 4 were unusable.”
“Last Saturday, we had six full senior games on Ground 3 and not a single red card,” Kautoga said with great satisfaction.
Round 3 of the Vinod Patel Cup start this morning at 8am at Vinod Patel Park, with admission set at $5 and $2. The feature game is the Ba Industries Cup Challenge between Nailaga and Duiyasana at 3:30pm.
Action in last week’s Girls Under 16s Final between Western Saints (yellow) and Rarawai FSC. The Saints took the title after Rarawai were found to have fielded
