Northampton Saints Rugby Club is one of just three clubs in the Premiership with an all-natural pitch. Expectations and demands on the turf are high, but the grounds team lead by Head Groundsman Andrew Miller are delivering on every front.
Andrew has been using the 100% perennial ryegrass mixture, J Premier Pitch from Johnsons Sports Seed, for the past nine years. The new 2024 formulation blends five top-rated cultivars to create the ideal winter sport mix, incorporating Monroe and Gildara for significantly improved resistance to Brown Patch and other common turf diseases. Trusted by many of Europe’s leading stadia, J Premier Pitch delivers proven play performance and outstanding visual merit.
“The turf quality and quick establishment have surpassed our expectations, vitally important with the small windows we’re given to grow the pitch back in after concert season,” says Andrew. “It gives us more than just a great density of sward with vibrant green colour which looks fantastic in a stadium – the resilience and recovery is outstanding, particularly during intense periods of play and the bad weather we endure through the winter months.”
Besides the stadium, J Premier Pitch was also used on the replica stadium pitch at the club’s High Performance Centre – upgraded during the summer of 2022 and officially unveiled in April 2023. “We achieve fantastic consistency and know and trust the quality we’re going to get from every bag,” Andrew adds. “This seed mix has been the foundation to elevating all of our surfaces to a standard that professional athletes love to perform on!”