Long-serving head groundsman Steve Speed to leave Vale Park

Long-serving head groundsman Steve Speed is to leave Port Vale FC after 43 years working for the club, the Sentinel reports.

According to the newspaper:

Speed has no plans to retire but is parting company with the club he has served since 1979, having joined as a 17 year old from the city council’s parks department and gone on to be the club’s head groundsman for 31 years.

He has prepared the pitches for 16 different full-time managers, from Dennis Butler to Darrell Clarke, and has been a constant at a club that had to fight to avoid applying for re-election near the bottom of the old Fourth Division, was transformed into a Championship outfit under John Rudge in the late 1980s and 1990s and then had to twice come through administration since the turn of the century.