Town boss Kieran McKenna is pleased that his players have been able to train on their new pitches on the Playford Road side of the training ground for the first time this week but says further changes will be made when the new Portman Road surface is installed in the summer.
CEO Mark Ashton revealed that the club were set to develop three pitches for the first team as part of ongoing improvements at Playford Road when speaking in a TWTD/Blue Monday podcast in March and that work, which is understood to have cost around £1.5 million, has now been completed.
The first team has traditionally always trained on the Bent Lane side of the training ground but McKenna wanted them closer to the buildings.
"The flow of the training ground is really important to me,” he said. "So it helps the flow of the mornings, from the classroom to the indoor dome, where we do our activation and out onto the pitches. And the quality of the surface is good.
"It’s been nice, fresh surroundings for everyone this week and hopefully it will be a benefit for us through the winter months, but more important beneficial to the club, first team and academy, for the longer term.”
McKenna says the new pitches are more similar to Portman Road but with further changes to be made when the new Desso pitch [hybrid natural grass and artificial fibre] is installed at the stadium in the summer.
"Size-wise and surface-wise, it’s a lot closer than what we had,” he continued regarding the new pitches. "At the moment, I’d say that they are very close to what is at Portman Road currently.
"What we’re hoping to put into Portman Road or what we’re planning to put into Portman Road is a Desso pitch, which we haven’t put into the training pitches yet.
"But that’s something that has been discussed. That as and when that goes into Portman Road we will hopefully in time transition one of our training pitches to that Desso surface, which isn’t so difficult to do once that groundwork has been done which the club have done in laying the current pitch.”
McKenna says training and playing on similar pitches benefits a team: "I think it helps. Dimensions-wise, we’ve matched it up as well as we could. It helps, but of course, you have away games as well, so every other week you’re playing on a different surface and you have to be able to adapt to that.
"But I think, in general, having at least one of your training pitches as closely matched to your match pitch as possible is definitely beneficial.”