Accountant Adrian Raftery — pictured with wife Kylie and kids Hamish, 7, and Zoe, 4 — has taken sprucing up the yard to the next level by adding a cricket pitch, soccer field and playground. Picture: Nicki Connolly Source: News Corp Australia
Howzat for a backyard?
Adrian Raftery has transformed his Mt Martha property by creating a cracking cricket pitch and soccer field out back.
The doting dad has also installed a playground with slides, monkey bars, a sandpit and a trampoline, which is a hit with kids Hamish, 7, and Zoe, 4, and he’s now working on adding a bike track.
Given he’s batting above his average — being an accountant by trade with no background in landscaping — he reckons other sports-tragic homeowners could replicate his handiwork if they were willing to put in the time.
Mr Raftery said he began planning his backyard cricket pitch from the moment he and his wife, Kylie, spied the 6070sq m property they now call home.
“As soon as I saw this nice, flat block of land, I wasn’t thinking, ‘does it have enough bedrooms, or is the kitchen nice enough?’” he said.
“I was immediately thinking, ‘there’s a spot for a cricket pitch’.”
Fast forward two years, and the coronavirus lockdown has made Mr Raftery’s passion project more relevant than ever.
“I’ve been trying to encourage my kids to move from screen time to green time. And it (the backyard) has been used every day,” he said.
“We haven’t been able to watch any sports, but we’ve created our own test matches.”
The family and their labradors Bella and Zippah enjoy the soccer field. Picture: Nicki Connolly Source: News Corp Australia
Mr Raftery said creating the sports set-up was “relatively easy” once the “most time-consuming part” — weeding — was completed.
He made the cricket pitch with a “cheap” roller he bought from Bunnings, drilled a hole into and filled with concrete.
“That made the pitch flatter, which is important when you may have the next Ricky Ponting or Ellyse Perry playing on it,” he said.
Mr Raftery also purchased a line marker to draw the boundaries of the mini cricket and soccer fields, which “saved a lot of time” compared to trying to measure straight lines with a rope.
He installed stumps and goals on the pitches, and ordered the playground equipment from Alibaba and assembled it over a couple of days.
To keep his backyard sports precinct fresh, Mr Raftery mows the fields every two to three weeks and updates the boundary line markings every six to eight weeks.
“We haven’t had the kids’ mates come over yet, but hopefully over the next few weeks they will,” he said.
“The dream is that they or one of their mates who plays a backyard test match here will go on to play test cricket for Australia.”
Originally published as Dad creates ultimate iso backyard in the news.com.au syndicated papers on 3 June 2020.