Grounds
North Down Hockey Club is based at the Green in Comber, home of North Down Cricket Club. The first hockey pitch was at the Castle Lane side of the ground on the cricket outfield and this remained the home pitch for the first eleven until the early 1980s. A celebration game against Cliftonville as part of the Centenary in 1996 was played on this same pitch.
The first Council shale pitch in Comber was opened in September 1972 at Park Way in the town and this was followed by the opening of another shale pitch at Enler Park which is now the site of Comber Leisure Centre.
In 1994 the decision was taken to play all first-team games on the artificial turf pitch at Ards Leisure Centre in Newtownards. In 1999, the shale pitch at Comber Leisure Centre was replaced with a sand-based synthetic pitch where the majority of home games are now played. This pitch was replaced in 2010 with a sand-dressed surface. In addition to retaining a match slot at Ards Leisure Centre, North Down also uses the synthetic pitch at Nendrum College in Comber that was opened in 2010.
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Famous quotes containing the word grounds:
“The best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The principle of the brotherhood of man is ... narcissistic ... for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford,
Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.”
—Derek Mahon (b. 1941)