Town manager Kieran McKenna says if Town want to be a club which operates at the higher echelons, then they need a training ground which matches those ambitions, CEO Mark Ashton having announced a multi-million pound upgrade of Town’s Playford Road facility at last night’s Fans’ Forum.

Town have been at Playford Road and Bent Lane sites either side of the road since the mid-1990s with the club initially leasing before buying the land in 2001.

The main building at Playford Road was initially an academy facility when opened in 2001 but over the years has increasingly been taken over by the first team while still in use by the youngsters and also in more recent seasons the women’s team.

Asked whether he has given Ashton a list of what he’d like from a training ground from his experiences at his previous clubs and what he’s seen elsewhere, McKenna said: “Those discussions are ongoing, I’ll have input into what I think would be not just essential for what I want or what I like, it’s more about the future of the football club and where we want to bring the football club and what legacy we want to leave behind maybe many years down the line when I’m not here.

“Part of that is that if we want to be a top football club and operate at the higher echelons of the game, then we need a training facility which is suitably matches that.

“There’s definitely work to be done. The owners have been fantastic in supporting myself and the changes that myself and the staff have wanted to make within the building that we have here over the last 18 months, have been fantastic in terms of support in the need for new training pitches and fencing that we now have.

“But I think we’re still in the position where it’s a building which was built for the academy and now we have the men’s team, the women’s team and the academy age groups all sharing out of the same building and we’re in a Portakabin as we speak.

“The club has managed well with the Portakabins but to get to where we want to get to eventually, having a more state-of-the-art, purpose-built first-team training facility would be beneficial for now and for the future of the club.”

But be believes the grounds themselves have great potential: “We’ve got a really good site in a lovely part of the country where we’re lucky to get nice weather.

“We’ve got a really good site and we have training pitches now that are of a really high level that help the club.

“We’ve done lots of internal work to the buildings that are here that have brought them up to spec, but there’s still [more work to be done].

“We know what areas of the training ground we want to develop and there’s still land that we can use to hopefully develop another building.

“There’s certainly scope here and the foundations to develop the training ground on this site and hopefully we will have a facility which is excellent for the first team but also for the ladies team and excellent for the academy where they can all thrive for years to come.”

Photo: TWTD

Suffolkboy added 18:19 - Sep 14 Super site ,great location and with a history of sporting activities going back many decades ! It’ll prove extremely worthwhile for years to come . COYB
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Linkboy13 added 18:32 - Sep 14 Yes i agree we need to be more ambitious with our infrastructure but that also applies to our dealings in the transfer market in the future.
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Dyland added 20:18 - Sep 14 "... what legacy we want to leave behind maybe many years down the line when I’m not here." I... I don't understand... when you're not here? Oh Kieran if you got to go away, I don't think I can take the pain, won't you stay another day. Etc, arf! COYFB
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Edmundo added 21:17 - Sep 14 Proper infrastructure planning. We may even see a separate Academy site eventually, should both men's and women's teams be top tier.
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bobble added 06:10 - Sep 15 great expectations.....but hey ! why not ?
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Bazza8564 added 08:47 - Sep 15 The main building used to be Cranes sports and social club, probably since the 50's or before. Time to invest, this facility is used 7 days a week and top notch facilities will help produce and attract top notch players
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ArnieM added 09:06 - Sep 15 Planning for Champions League …. Brilliant, and why not!
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Kentish_Tractor added 11:15 - Sep 15 If we are serious about becoming a top level club we need top level facilities. We've got the top level manager and top level staff now. It's all coming together nicely. To be honest it's probably better to maybe focus on the facilities while we consolidate our position in the championship for a season or 2 and then once those are in place, THEN we make our promotion push. Hopefully by then we've amassed a few quid in the bank from player trading to be able to afford the bigger transfer fees on the players we will need.

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SpiritOfJohn added 11:35 - Sep 15 I'm not sure why but this reminded me of part of David Peace's novel about Bill Shankly called "Red or Dead", where Shankly and Bob Paisley walked up and down the Liverpool training pitch collecting stones and weeds while the players ran round the perimeter. How times have changed!
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Ipswichbusiness added 19:59 - Sep 15 Marcus Evans left us looking like the League One side that he turned us into. Gamechanger want us to look like the Prem Club that we all hope to be.
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