SWINDON Town look set to invest in the pitches at Beversbrook Sports Facility as they explore the option of having it as their permanent training base for the forthcoming season.

While chairman Lee Power has put his own money into a new training ground in Highworth, purchasing the land of the former Twelve Oaks golf course which the club will be charged a ‘peppercorn’ rent, plans to convert it into a suitable facility for the club to use are still in their infancy, with DPDS steering the club through the planning process.

As a result, Town kicked off their pre-season training yesterday in Calne, a location Swindon signed a three-year formal agreement with back in June 2015.

However, flooding issues caused Town to look elsewhere and used Royal Wootton Bassett Town’s Gerard Buxton Sports Ground for much of last season.

But Flitcroft is confident that investment in one of the pitches at Beversbrook could see it become the perfect home this year.

“It’s a site we have had a look at,” said Flitcroft, who asked for assurances on the training facilities from Power before agreeing to taking the role.

“We’ve had a look at a few sites, this one at the minute has got everything I need.

“It’s not just about having a couple of grass pitches, the club are potentially going to invest in one of the grass pitches here, to make them more sustainable through the winter periods and through a time when we are going to need a good surface.

“The lads have prepared it incredibly hard, the surface for today, and it’s not just the pitches. We’ve got a building, a food room where we will have dinner together, we’ve got a small gym area where we can do our activation work and pre-work and a social area.

“They are the big things that, if we can lock them down and make sure that we can have them, it will be a base where we have got all our teaching, physical or technical aspect, tactical aspect and social aspect and bringing a squad together, you need all of them.”