Sunderland Ladies lose access to first-team training facilities at Academy of Light

Sunderland’s women’s team will no longer share training facilities with the club’s men’s first XI at the Academy of Light and are also set to move grounds.
Stadium of Light executives have implemented the shift in response to the Women’s Super League moving from a summer to a winter game – the new WSL1 season starts this month – and their women’s side recently switching from full-time to part-time status.
They say that, with Melanie Reay’s team now training in the evenings, it is no longer logistically possible for them to stage practice sessions at the Academy of Light, where junior men’s development teams use the indoor barn at night and the outdoor pitches lack floodlights.
Accordingly the side who finished a creditable fifth in this year’s WSL Spring Series are set to relocate to Northumbria University’s Coach Lane Campus in Benton, a northern suburb of Newcastle. Almost literally a long goal-kick from Newcastle United’s training ground, Coach Lane houses an FA elite training centre.
Although it is only 13 miles north of the Academy of Light by the fastest route, traffic around Tyneside is infamously heavy in the early evenings and those players travelling from jobs and homes in Wearside and North Yorkshire will inevitably face big queues to get through the Tyne Tunnel or over the city’s bridges. Nonetheless Sunderland officials say the women are “excited” by the impending move and will appreciate their new base’s “bespoke” facilities.
The club is also finalising negotiations to move Reay’s squad from their present match-day base at the Hetton Centre, in Hetton-Le-Hole, to a ground share with the leading local men’s non-league side South Shields.
The well appointed Mariners Park, situated 12 miles north of the Hetton Centre, is arguably a better venue for the women because of its superior road and public transport links. Sunderland, who will pay to use Northumbria University’s facilities, will finance work in updating the changing facilities and certain seating areas at South Shields to comply with WSL regulations.
With assorted Sunderland development teams playing at the Hetton Centre, fixture clashes occasioned by the new WSL winter season are said to have driven the transfer to South Shields, where they now hope to attract bigger crowds.
Meanwhile the club is adamant that Reay’s squad will continue to have access to the excellent medical facilites they currently enjoy, including readily available physiotherapy and fast-track access to the leading orthopaedic surgeon male Sunderland players suffering lower limb injuries are routinely referred to.
With the club, relegated to the Championship last season, deeply in debt, there are fears the moves to South Shields and Coach Lane could signal a future divorce from the women’s squad.
Martin Bain, the chief executive, reverted the team to part-time status partly on cost-cutting grounds but is understood to have initiated the double relocations purely bceause of logistical problems occasioned by the new winter women’s season.

SOURCE : GUARDIAN SPORTS
posted by CAMPUS94