Ipswich Town are hoping Kieran McKenna and his players will benefit from a move across the road and a significant upgrade in training facilities. 

The Blues have invested in the region of £1.5m in three state-of-the-art training pitches on the Playford Road side of their training ground, close to the club’s indoor dome, with the first-team using them for the first time on Tuesday. 

That means a move away from the Ipswich senior team’s traditional home on the Bent Lane side of the complex, with the investment a big part of ongoing work to improve facilities at Town’s training base and coming at the request of McKenna. 

“We have put three new pitches in at the training ground and they are ready for Kieran and the team,” CEO Mark Ashton said, speaking with our Kings of Anglia podcast.

“They are the best pitches we have got across the club and have all the integrated irrigation system, the water and the pop-ups and are Premier League pitches. 

“Kieran only joined us a year ago and, midway through that time asked for the pitches. They are now ready so that’s moving at breakneck speed.

 

“We’ll then go onto other developments at the training ground around buildings, changing rooms and things like that. But we move at breakneck speed right across the board. 

“That’s the standards Kieran and his staff set, which helps us with recruitment because one thing’s for sure – players talk. 

“If we look into the possibility of signing a player the first thing they will do is call Sam Morsy or call Conor Chaplin, Wes Burns or Christian Walton. They will tell them what we and Kieran is about and it’s a massive positive.” 

McKenna made the request for more space due to the fact he wishes to use three pitches simultaneously to run training, which is something the club could not accommodate on the Bent Lane side. 

READ MORE: Predicting how Town will fare in crucial Christmas clashes

Ashton continued: “Right now, the ones at Bent Lane are deteriorating because the infrastructure on the build of those pitches, done a long time ago, wasn’t sufficient to get them through the winter. 

“The new ones are so we’ll be moving over. 

“One of the things Kieran wanted was three full-size pitches and we can’t have that on the Bent Lane side.” 

As well as extensive work to upgrade Portman Road since the club’s American takeover in April of 2021, the new owners also quickly sanctioned a number of temporary buildings at Playford Road in order to house a significant increase in backroom and medical staff around the Town first-team.