GAMES are coming thick and fast at St George's Lane but too many to sustain the quality of the pitch.

Groundsmen Richard Bush and Martin Knight are custodians of the playing surface and admit it's a nigh on impossible task keeping it in good nick.

It's a familiar story. Previous groundsman Chris Dale, who resigned towards the end of last season after comments by manager John Barton about the state of the St George's Lane pitch, calculated that there had been 94 games in the previous season at the Lane.

Even Alan Titchmarsh might struggle to produce a decent surface out of that!

First team, reserve and youth games, assorted cup finals plus training all add to constant use and the wear and tear that ultimately impacts on the quality of football served up.

It's an easy cop out to blame the pitch but anyone, at whatever level, who has played on bone dry April pitches, realises how difficult it can be to play on such a surface. But by the same token, it's a thankless task trying to maintain a pitch when it is in such constant use.

Bush relates the scale of traffic on St George's Lane leading up to the weekend of the recent Merthyr and Crawley games which is set to be repeated until the end of the season.

"The Saturday before the Crawley game there were two kids games in the morning and a reserve team game in the afternoon," said Bush.

"There were also games on Tuesday, Wednesday, training on Thursday and first team games on the Saturday and Monday. "That's how it goes most of the season. It's a no win situation but whoever does the job accepts that.

"The plain facts are that there are just too many games for it to be in ace condition. I can't do anything about it because the pitch is a revenue earner for the club.

"At the end of the season with local finals you don't have time to do anything with it other than mark it out - that's about it. Don't forget this is a strictly part time job. You have to fit it around your job. If people realise how many games were played on there it might make them think why it is probably not as good as it could be.

"I'm with them on that one but there is nothing you can do about it because the time factor doesn't allow you to give it rest and get seed coming through."