Ron Allsopp, who passed away in early April (2025), was the Head Groundsman at Trent Bridge from 1975 to 1995, having joined the ground staff in 1953.
Written by Duncan Hamilton, author of 'Harold Larwood' and a former Evening Post journalist, this previously-unpublished article about Ron was not originally intended as a tribute or an obituary. However in these sad circumstances the article stands as a thoroughly fitting tribute to one of Trent Bridge’s greatest team members.
No one man can know everything, but I am as sure as I can be that Ron came as close to it as anyone – before or since – in regard to groundsmanship. If expressed in percentages, the sum total of his knowledge about his profession would be on a par with Donald Bradman’s batting average.
In the 1980s, usually on a winter Thursday night, I drank with Ron in a pub not far from his home in The Meadows. He knew every bit of gossip buzzing around Trent Bridge.
Of course, the ’80s were a grand feast for Nottinghamshire after decades of famine. The Championship was won twice – in 1981 and 1987 – on the broad back of the efforts of three men, each very remarkable in his own way.
The first was Clive Rice.
The second was Richard Hadlee.
The third was Ron.
His relationship with Trent Bridge began like this...
In 1952 he opened a copy of the Evening Post and discovered a 20-word advertisement in the Situations Vacant column. It was squashed between a job for a carpenter and another for an oxy-acetylene cutter. Notts wanted an assistant groundsman. The pay, which the advertisement did not specify, was a pitiful £5.18s a week. The average working wage was then £10 a week.
A mere 22 years later, Ron became Head Groundsman, only the 10th holder of the office in the club’s history (his appointment was about as rare as the election of a Pope).
I can honestly say this. He was one of the most unpretentious and unostentatious figures I have ever known. He would have preferred to graft quietly and in anonymity, but that was impossible. ‘Every morning at a cricket match, the first thing anyone looks at is the pitch and the first thing anyone asks is: ‘How will it play?’, he told me. ‘You and it are the centre of attention, whether you like it or not. Most of the time, I didn’t’.
Test matches were like ‘Royal Variety Performances at the London Palladium,’ he added ‘where every b****r becomes a critic’. One morning, a Test imminent, he arrived to discover tiny mounds of earth on the outfield. He began to panic, believing a mole with some personal grudge was plotting against him. He realised only belatedly that the players, watching from the balcony, had tipped a bag of soil on to the turf in a none-too sophisticated prank. ‘I’d rushed around like a prat in a panic. That’s what the pressure of a Test does to you.’
Standing beside Ron during the opening overs of a County Championship game, I saw him scowl and I heard him mutter, like a growl, whenever a batsman wandered down the pitch and began showily ‘gardening’, patting down imaginary bumps, scuffs and specs of dirt, or when a bowler, using his studs like the prongs of a rake, chivvied away at the footholds. Staged performances such as these, a form of semaphore signalling displeasure with the pitch, irritated Ron, who knew he would ‘never satisfy’ both batsman and bowler. Someone always complained, like Goldilocks picking fault with her porridge.
During 12 to 14 hour days, he made pitches with the bespoke care of a Saville Row tailor cutting a suit. These surfaces were fitted around the talents of Rice and Hadlee, which meant most were the colour of the baize of a snooker table. If not, Rice would ‘b*****k’ him ‘in disgust,’ he said. He left the grass on, allowing the two of them to torment the top and middle order and petrify the tail-enders. Quoted in David Hopps’ indispensable collection A Century of Great Cricket Quotes, Ron justified himself:
‘I grew up here in the Fifties and spent half my time watching people nod off and go home early. Just lately, they bloody well haven’t’.
‘If they want pitches that do b****r all, that’s easy. If they want pitches that are dangerous, that’s easy too. Good cricket pitches, the sort that we think we produce more often than not, are difficult’.
There is a third quote in which he and Rice ‘debate’ whether to use a pitch against Warwickshire that Ron believes is so undercooked as to be potentially lethal. A short ball, he argued, could lead either to decapitation or the sight of someone’s heart being punched out of his chest. In A Century of Great Cricket Quotes, Rice turns to Ron and asks: ‘What’s the matter? Have you gone bloody religious?” This is an abbreviated version. The expletives, which I have excluded, were bluer than a sailor’s peacoat.
The sequel ran like this: Ron got his way, Notts lamely drew the game after failing to take the last two wickets and Rice publicly lambasted him in print. Uncharacteristically, Ron criticised him back, also in print. He accused Rice of making excuses for his own failures. No word passed between them for nearly a fortnight. Like a warring husband and wife, they communicated by glaring at one another, the silence absolute. The relationship survived this and several more vexations because each admired the other so much. ‘He was the best groundsman - and the best of blokes,’ said Rice.
Acknowledging Ron’s importance to their Championship success in 1981, Notts commissioned a miniature replica of the gold County Championship chalice for him. He brought both it and another trophy to the pub (his Groundsman of the Year of the award, I think) in a Co-Op carrier bag. He laid them gently on the table beside my pint. I remember his creased face, his wire-framed spectacles and greyish, thick hair were reflected in gold and silver. His skin, baked by constant exposure to the sun, was the colour of strong tea.
Above all, I remember Ron’s hands: the calluses on his palms from the repeated pressure of using the wooden-handled implements of his trade, including a worn brush that he was seldom seen without; he probably took the thing to bed with him.
The true ‘gardener’, he once told me, does not wear gloves; he likes the feel of the soil on his fingers. ‘The soil talks to you that way’.
Reproduced by kind permission of Duncan Hamilton
Photos: 9 August 1995:
(This page) Trent Bridge Groundsman Ron Allsopp checks the wicket as Brian Lara of the West Indies looks on during nets practice prior to the 5th Cornhill Test Match between England and the West Indies at Trent Bridge. Brian must have approved - he made 152, the highest score in the drawn test.
(Header page) Ron Allsopp at Trent Bridge ahead of that 5th Cornhill Test.
Credit: Graham Chadwick/ALLSPORT
April 2025