With no football being played at Stanhope Recreation Reserve this season, club members decided to seize the opportunity and rip up the wickets and lay new ones for the first time in a long while.
“The old boys at the club reckon it's probably been 30-odd years since it last got done,” club secretary Ben Condell said.
“We decided it was probably time to have a look at it and see what we could do. I'm not sure how often you're meant to do it, but 30 years is definitely a bit longer than that.”
Ripping up the pitch started late last month, with the new grass going down a week later.
“It's pretty full-on, when we were initially digging it we had a to go a lot deeper than we thought because there was a lot more clay, it's a big job,” Condell said.
With the new grass planted, about two months will be needed to get it into tip-top shape.
The recreation reserve will also receive a share of $183,211 in Federal Government funding via the Murray-Darling Basin Economic Development Program.
The money will be put towards designs for works on the reserve.
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