Recent Results and News

(updated Thursday 14 May, 2012)

Last weekend, A2, playing a washed out match, got beaten.
A Res 1 were defeated and A Res 2 had a win.

Next weekend, A1 host A2.

The Annual Church Parade is to be held at Aberfeldie Baptists, Price St Essendon at 5pm on Sunday 27 May.
After the service, there will be a meal, at own cost, at the Imperial Garden Restaurant at 363 Buckley St Essendon.
Please let Jan know on 9379 8413 or janmclean@internode.on.net if you intend to attend.

Yesterday, I went to our courts at 8am to set up our courts for the  use by Maribyrnong Park Tennis Club C Grade team.  The team arrived promptly and when I returned at noon for an ARes 2 match, the match had been finished and the courts were deserted.  This use will continue for the next 2 weekends.

The reason MPTC is using our courts is that their courts 5, 6 and 7 are being pulled up and a concrete base put in as parts of the courts are sinking.  The cost for this I believe is around $350 000.

The company doing the work were meant to start last Tuesday but, due to some reason, the job will not start until tomorrow.  The company was going to rip up the mod grass and dump it.  That is the reason I asked for male team members to help out at 9am today.  The fact that is was not only Sunday but also Mother's Day caused some problems, understandably.

Turning up to MPTC this morning were Shaun, Chris, Travers, Garry, Andrew R, Andrew C, myself and 3 blokes from MPTC (including Anthony Barbieri).

The  cameraderie amongst the group was great even though it was raining at different times.  Just getting started, when it was raining, was due to enthusiasm of most of the group. The mod grass is in very good condition.  As a group we eventually worked out how we were going to do the job because none of us had experience at it before.  As it turns out the white base line (not the white side lines) is easily pulled up in one go.  Obviously, this leaves a very straight edge on the mod grass between the court and the fence.  All we had to do was to measure 3.8 m (the width of the distance between our 2 courts) from the base line.  After a small initial cut, we placed a 4x2 long length of timber, stood on it, and simply pulling it along the length of the timber and it ripped easily.  The ends of this length were simply lifted up as the original court is layed in sections.

Each court produced 3 lengths of width 3.8 m giving a total of 11 m.  For courts 5, 6 and 7, we ended up with 9 3.8 m pieces for a total of 33 m, the length from the North fence to the South fence of our courts.

The bit between these pieces and the fence at MPTC is about 92 cm and so we ended up with 9 bits of this too.

Once we realized what to do., the above steps were easy to do and didn't take any significant energy.

The next steps took a lot of energy.  As the mod grass was wet and contains sand, the pieces are very heavy.  We rolled up each of the 3.8 m pieces and then it took the 10 of us, using lengths of rope, to lift each piece and carry out of courts and place under the trees near the footpath.  The 0.92 m pieces took 4 to lift and move.

5 blokes had to leave, so the 5 us remaining put the 0.92 m pieces in my trailor (2 trips of 5 and then 4) and took them to our courts and placed inside our courts beside the western fence.

The 9 3.8 m pieces are still at MPTC.  The 5 us who were left, thought that if we could get 10 of our members to come next Sunday, we could shift these pieces to our courts.  At this stage, Shaun, George and myself can be there.  So we need another 7 blokes.  As it would take 4 or 5 trailor trips it would probably take about  2 hours.
COULD YOU LET ME KNOW BY E-MAIL TODAY OR MONDAY OR TUESDAY PLEASE IF YOU CAN ATTEND so that I know if some other approach is needed.

Once we have all the mod grass, we can take as long as we like to decide how we will handle the installation.  Unfortunately, because of the company is starting the reconstruction job tomorrow, we didn't have sufficient time today to get the 1.7 m and 2.7 m lengths for the Western and Eastern sides of our court so we will have to use the 0.92 m pieces somehow.

Some of the benefits of the mod grass if we can install it:
1.  To try and prevent  dirt from going onto the courts which encourages moss etc
2.  Reduces mowing and cost of spraying
3.  Important safety measure in that it reduces the risk of injury due to slipping.
5.  Important safety measure in that it reduces the risk of injury in that the "gap" (resulting from spraying to keep the weeds from growing onto and under the court) between the court and the grass will be eliminated