Clitheroe Rugby Club's pitch perfect thanks to NHS staff

Grateful members of Clitheroe Rugby Club have expressed their appreciation of emergency workers who are dealing with the coronavirus outbreak in a very special way ....with a giant "thank you" message across their grass pitch.
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The impressive message, which reads "NHS THANK YOU. TO NHS STAFF. CLITHEROE RUGBY CLUB THANKS NHS" was the idea of the club's talented groudsman, Phil Isherwood.

Club chairman, Mr Bob Wilkinson explained: "The idea came from groundsman Phil Isherwood, who wanted to do something that would show the club’s appreciation for the men and women of the NHS. As well as tending to our rugby pitch over many years, Phil has his own business maintaining people’s gardens and sports pitches. He recently made a new investment, a robotic line marking machine, and has been able to create this brilliant piece of art using his new machine. Basically, he’ll set up a programme as to how an area is to be marked out before filling the machine with line marking solution and sending it the programme."

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He added; "Realising that, whilst we could see the big letters walking past the pitch, we couldn’t really appreciate the whole thing unless viewing it from the air. We knew that Richard Edmondson, a long standing player also flies his drone to great effect and Richard was able to take some great videos and stills using his drone. To top it all off, the weather was superb on the day, which really helped show off what the guys have done!""

The impressive piece of art. Picture by Richard EdmondsonThe impressive piece of art. Picture by Richard Edmondson
The impressive piece of art. Picture by Richard Edmondson

Mr Wilkinson concluded by saying: "It all went really well and when it comes down to it, these guys, club members through and through, wanted to do something on behalf of the rugby club, to show our appreciation as an organisation for the fantastic work done by our NHS."