'F.A. Carling Premiership Presentation'

Impact.

We received a phone call on the afternoon of Thursday 27th April; with regard to providing a pyrotechnic celebration. Since this was just 6 days (three days of which were a bank holiday weekend!) before we would need to have the whole thing planned, all equipment and materials packed and be on our way to Manchester, we left immediately in order to carry out a preliminary site survey of the Old Trafford stadium on the Friday morning.

After a satisfactory site survey, we were able to put together a plan, order the equipment and materials, pull in the 10 man crew needed to execute the plan, organise their accommodation and transport.

In addition to this we produced a comprehensive suite of documents (24 A4 pages!) including a description of the planned effects, method statements concerning how we would execute the various tasks involved and risk assessments covering the work and each of the specific firework/pyrotechnic devices we planned to use.

The plan consisted of firing 35 glitter (confetti) cartridges from the stadium roof (directly over the players tunnel - designed to catch the light and show up well on television) 5 seconds before the players were due to emerge - so that the glitter would be falling around them as they appeared.

4 off 49 shot titanium salute & cracking mine cakes would then start firing to produce a (very) loud accompaniment to the event.

40 X 60 shot red and white roman candle batteries would send coloured stars arcing over the stadium with 3Kg of flutter fetti (1Kg each of red, white and black) was released from the roof.

As the players walked towards the presentation dais, 18 pitch based glitter cartridges would fire to re-enforce the roof launched glitter and a dozen sets of silver fountains (gerbs) were to keep pace with the player procession.

As the first player lifted the trophy 5 off 3" titanium salute aerial shells were to burst in the sky.

Thursday 3rd May saw various pre-preparation activities taking place (safety equipment checks and firework fusing, etc.) in addition to holding demonstrations for the club secretary, various health and safety and local authority officers in order to belay any safety concerns they had.

The 24 pages of documentation stood us in good stead and lead to Live Action FX Ltd. being the first such company to be given the green light for our plans by each and everyone of the officers concerned!

Friday 4th May was a busy day, with all the roof based effects being rigged and tested, while the pitch based effects were prepared - we were unable to access the pitch and practise our procedures, as pre-match pitch maintenance was in progress.

On the day of the match we had just 7 minutes on the pitch after the players had left the field, to lay our four cables, connect 42 pyrotechnic devices and test the circuits ready for firing - we achieved this in 5 minutes flat and were able to fire the effects on cue.