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Mark, last year you said you'd spoken to someone from the council regarding training facilities - did you get any come back?

ME: We've not had any luck with trying to find any permanent training facilities. The FA hasn't got back to us with regards to their site near Burton. There is Shobnall but they have a rugby club that occupy the centre pitch and they are under contract to remain there until the end of this season. Hopefully we will be able to use that next season. The new ground will provide us, at last with floodlit training facilities. Other sites have declined and it's a constant problem trying to find places to train. The council are aware of my concerns over that but it does not only affect the first team but also the reserves, youth and junior teams who struggle to find floodlit grassed or even artificial surfaces in the area. We've got Pingle school coming on line probably within a year which will provide some resource but I suspect that will be over subscribed pretty early on.

GN: It's one of main discussion points throughout the season and the players will bare me out, that training on a suitable pitch is vitally important. Most of the players enjoy training but the biggest frustration is we can't get on any significant training pitches to work on things. We need regular training facilities to enable us to push on. We are very fortunate to have sponsorship from Fitness First but ultimately going down to a gym to top up the fitness levels is not going to improve us as a squad of players practically or organisationally. We don't get a chance to work on set plays like we did early in the season. If we could get regular training on Tuesday's and Thursday's it would help kick us on to another level in my opinion.

If we got promoted would we have to do much to this ground?

ME: I don't think so. The ground grading has come down slightly. We may have to add a turnstile to the bottom gate but because of the restructuring they've also had a look at the ground requirements and to my knowledge they are still in draft and have yet to be confirmed.

Gary, what was your opinion of the Woodley pitch?

GN: Personally I thought it played well and was a good idea. It encourages you to get the ball down and play. It took a little bit of adjustment getting used to the little bit of excessive bounce but it was consistent and even. I think it's a good idea particularly for clubs who are finding it difficult to generate funds away from match days. If we had that as a training facility next door or even the main pitch you could hire it out to the community as Woodley do and they make a fair bit of money from it. Whether it's the way forward for non-league football I've not got a view either way at the minute. But I was impressed and it does encourage good football. It didn't affect the result when we played them and afterwards we had to fill in a report, as all UniBond clubs do, and we were quite complimentary of the surface.

It's funny that the UniBond say you can play league matches on it but the FA do not allow cup games on it

GN: I understand that but it is an experimental surface and the UniBond league gave their approval of it but the FA are awaiting the outcome of this experiment. Woodley were aware that they would have to play away for their FA competition games. I think it's only fair and it remains to be seen what the outcome of the experiment is. I don't think it has any unfair advantages. Yes, Woodley can train on it and then play their home games on it but they then have to play on grassed pitches when they play away.