While Jamie Day has continued being busy building his Braintree Town squad for next season, the club's board and groundstaff have been equally industrious in providing his players with a well-drained surface to play on.

Chairman Lee Harding said to the Braintree and Witham Times that drainage operations on the Avanti Stadium pitch were due to be completed today after extensive work to prevent a repeat of waterlogging issues that hampered the club’s ability to stage scheduled home games during times last winter after periods of heavy rainfall.

The Iron’s board paid for an analysis of the pitch by an expert from the Sport Turf Research Institute last season and have followed recommendations to undertake the work.

Harding said: “We’re hoping that the work will be concluded today and we’re hopeful that it will help the club solve the problems that we’ve had with drainage in recent years.

“We were reluctant to spend a fortune given that the club are looking to move to a new home, but with that not looking likely until the summer of 2019, we’re hoping this work will give us three years of avoiding those problems.

“We were helped by the windfall we received from the play-off home game against Grimsby and that has allowed us to cover the cost. It is a complex system that has been laid with trenches dug between five and six metres apart across the pitch, then four-inch perforated pipes laid in them with specific size shingle and sand on top to be the most effective way of drawing water off the surface that we can have.

“We have followed the advice we got from the Sport Turf Research Institute and are hoping that it improves the situation.”

Harding added that cash would be spent on the training pitch adjacent to the Avanti Stadium and said a couple of Braintree Town Youth Football club sides would be playing on there this season as part of closer ties that they and the senior club are looking to have.