Revised AFC Bournemouth training ground plans submitted

Premier League football club AFC Bournemouth has submitted revised plans for a new training ground.

The proposed site is the 57-acre former Canford Magna Golf Club site.

It had initially been due to include 10 full-size pitches but this has been scaled back to nine. However, three goalkeeper pitches have been added.

If approved by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, the club said work would start with "immediate effect".

The proposals also include an indoor and an outdoor artificial playing surface, as well as medical, fitness, sports science and rehabilitation facilities and a press conference theatre.

In December 2017, before Dorset's nine councils merged into two unitary authorities, the now defunct Borough of Poole council initially granted planning permission for the centre.

Cherries' chief executive Neill Blake described the submission of the amended plans as "another important step forward for the future of this football club".

"This training centre will be part of the board's legacy and the plans illustrate that the facilities available to all levels of the club, from pre-academy all the way through to the first team, will be among the best in the Premier League," he added.

Bournemouth's first team, development squad, academy and pre-academy training operations and facilities will all operate from the complex.

The club had announced in October 2018 that plans to build the training ground - and a new stadium in King's Park, close to their current Vitality Stadium home - had been put on hold because they were "overly optimistic" at the time, adding any future development would "be undertaken around a healthy financial strategy".