The new Ipswich Town Football Club Training Centre was opened today by sports minister Richard Caborn. Training was switched to the afternoon due to the opening of the new £2 million centre.

The club will base the U17s side at the centre and around 230 of the best young players from around the region will attend the centre weekly.

David Sheepshanks said of the new centre: "The strength of the club's commitment to training and development - at all ages - is clearly demonstrated by our £2 million investment in this centre and a further annual contribution of £1 million to the operation of our Academy.

"Both recent and future success for Ipswich Town depends heavily on the quality of coaching and continuous improvement, and for these facilities to be most effective we need them to match the quality of our coaching programme.

"The Academy is pivotal to ongoing progress and over the next ten years we have set ourselves an ambitious target of seeing the number of homegrown players in the first-team squad rise towards 50 per cent.

"Our aim is to bring out the very best of those talents that each individual possesses in order to develop a winning team."

The Town squad currently is currently lighter on homegrown players than it has been for a while. The first-team squad contains just four, Richard Naylor, Darren Bent, Titus Bramble and Wayne Brown, although Brown is on loan at Wimbledon at the moment.

The summer saw two others leave (James Scowcroft and Richard Wright) while in recent years the club's youth system has also produced Kieron Dyer.

The centre covers roughly 40 acres and hosts up to 350 matches a season as well as on average 165 squad sessions per month.

Other features are: Twelve pitches, one floodlit, one Fieldturf, two 60 x 40 yard training areas, a floodlit goalkeepers' training area, sports dome, ten dressing rooms, a parents' lounge,a treatment room, a gym and rehabilitation centre, office accommodation and coaches' room, a laundry centre and full catering facilities.

Photo: Action Images

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