Getting it pitch perfect at Stadium MK ahead of Women’s Euros

The ground staff at Stadium MK have been in a race against time to get a new pitch laid ahead of the Women’s European Championships.

Milton Keynes plays host to four games of the tournament, the first of which will kick off on Friday July 8 when Spain take on Finland at MK1.

With concerts from My Chemical Romance and Imagine Dragons being held at Stadium MK, work on the pitch, which had been suffering towards the latter part of the football season, has not been possible until the last week or so.

Dons’ Head of Estates Andy Lee, who has been in charge of the relaying of the pitch, has been keeping fans up to date on Twitter with the progress of the work at the stadium and posted a picture of the newly installed surface on Friday.

The work being carried out this summer is the most intensive pitch renovation that has been carried out at Stadium MK since it was first laid in 2006.

Speaking to the Citizen in February, Lee explained: “All the fibres will be pulled out for the first time since it was put in in 2006. We’ll add in new, clean material, rotavate the top three or four inches, laser-level it, and then we’ve got a bed for a new hybrid turf pitch which is being grown in Lincoln.

“It will come in, it will be knitted and stitched together. Then we’ve got to let it settle, but we’ve only got eight or nine days before the Women’s Euros start.”

The ground staff have also been working on a new training pitch for the first team to use this summer which drew praise from head coach Liam Manning last week when the squad returned for pre-season training.

“A huge amount of credit has to go to (Performance Director) Simon Crampton and the groundstaff for the amount of work that has gone into getting the pitch sorted at the stadium but also the training pitch for us for pre-season.

“It feels so nice coming up here, it's a great environment to work in and allows us to concentrate, to work smoothly when we're setup like this.”