Lincoln City Football Club unveil their new £1.3 million training ground project. The development is on Heath Lane, RAF Scampton, and will take up 12.3 acres of land.
The project was largely funded by the Imps’ success story in the 2016/17 FA Cup run when they stole the show and went against all the odds to reach the quarter finals.
Lincoln City FC made somewhere in the region of £2 million after the quarter final defeat to Arsenal at the Emirates on the 11th March 2017. The club used this funding to pay for the development of their new development centre. “It wouldn’t have been possible without the success we had in the FA Cup run” said manager Danny Cowley.
The new training ground consists of three state of the art grass pitches, gymnasium, changing rooms and staff offices. Each pitch is of the same dimensions as the Sincil Bank pitch, accompanied with TV towers so training can be filmed, analysed and improved on.
This season, the 2018/19 FA Cup has increased its prize money for each round of the competition, making the need even greater for Lincoln City and the Cowley brothers to repeat their 2016/17 success story. “We hope the cup run has created a platform that can provide us with sustainable success” said Imps boss, Danny Cowley.
If the Imps fall at the same stage as they did two years ago, they will receive double the amount of prize money as they did in 2017. So far so good for the Imps in this year’s competition as they scored a dramatic last minute winner in round 1 of the FA Cup at home to Northampton Town, now with Carlisle United standing in the way of the Imps in round 2 on December 1st at Sincil Bank.
The media manager of Lincoln City Football Club, Terry Hibberd, is in high hopes that the new facility will be key in developing Lincoln City as a club in the years to come: “The EPC gives the squad and club a training base to call their own, after a number of years leading to something of a nomadic cycle training at local schools and other facilities around the city. It allows the team and club to plan longer term for the future, further develop our own players and attract new players to the club with the quality of the facilities available for them to be the best they can be”.