Yeovil Town have confirmed plans to move first team training to Bristol from the start of the 2025/26 season.

The Glovers will train at the SGS WISE Academy, part of the West of England Institute of Specialist Education (WISE), to the north of the city which the club says will give players and staff “access to top-class facilities in a high-performance environment.”

News of the move had been rumoured by former loanee and one-time permanent player Otis Khan in an interview with the I Had Trials Once podcast last month.

In a statement on the club’s website on Tuesday evening, manager Mark Cooper said: “From a football perspective, this is a really positive step for the club. The facilities at SGS Wise are first-class and will help create the kind of professional, high-performance culture we want to build here. It’s about giving the players everything they need to develop, compete, and succeed. At the same time, our heart remains in Yeovil – we’re doing this to bring success back to our fans and our town.”

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The statement from the club said that the relocation of training, which had previously taken place at the Alvington Playing Fields in Yeovil or on the artificial surface at Huish Park, would broaden its “recruitment reach.” It added: “By positioning ourselves in a more central and accessible location, we are better placed to attract a wider pool of talent – an important factor as we continue building a squad capable of pushing closer to a return to the Football League.”

Executive chairman Stuart Robins said: “This move represents a major milestone in the continued evolution of Yeovil Town Football Club. Providing our players and staff with access to elite training facilities is essential if we are to raise standards and push toward our ambition of returning to the Football League. The SGS Wise Campus offers exactly the kind of environment we need to drive progress and deliver results, while maintaining our strong identity and connection with the Yeovil community.”

The decision has raised questions from some supporters about the connection the club will maintain with the local community in Somerset by choosing to move its training base more than 70 miles away from Huish Park. Strengthening links with the community has been a centrepiece of the initial pitch made by new owner Prabhu Srinivasan who described service to the community as “equally important“ to success on the pitch in an open letter published after he completed his takeover.

The statement added: “This move represents a major milestone in the continued evolution of Yeovil Town Football Club. Providing our players and staff with access to elite training facilities is essential if we are to raise standards and push toward our ambition of returning to the Football League. The SGS Wise Campus offers exactly the kind of environment we need to drive progress and deliver results, while maintaining our strong identity and connection with the Yeovil community.“

You may recall that Mark Cooper spoke about training facilities at the fans forum back in January – click here to relive the answer, it starts about one hour and 33 minutes in to the recording.

Answering a question, the manager said: “The club went down in to the Championship and went down in to the non-League with no legacy whatsoever – no training ground, nothing. For me training facilities are the most important thing. I am not bothered about (the Huish Park) pitch because we are only on it 23 times a year, we train four or five times a week and that is where my work is done, so I need really good facilities if we are going to be better.

“That is one thing that will attract a player, certainly a good young player, who will ask ‘have I got somewhere really good to work every day?’ or am I going to come and train all over the place on a mud pit. Little things like that can attract players, so we have to strive for that.

“I am talking about trying to build organically, it is not boom or bust. Instead of spending money on a striker in the summer, we might put it on a training pitch which makes more sense to me.“

What is the SGS WISE Campus?

Opened in 2005, the SGS WISE Campus is the sports facility of the West of England Institute of Specialist Education (reckon they thought of the acronym first?).

It is based in Stoke Gifford which actually falls in the district of South Gloucestershire, but to all intents and purposes it is really north of Bristol – don’t tell the villagers we said that though! If you are driving, Google Maps suggests it is a 72.2 mile journey each way taking about one hour, 20 minutes – depending on traffic.

WISE is involved in teaching a whole range of subjects across the Bristol area including arts at the Bristol School of Arts, construction and engineering, hairdressing, beauty and complementary therapies and animal science and conservation – and sport, of course.

On the WISE website, it describes its Football Stadium Pitch as follows: “The Football Stadium Pitch at SGS WISE Campus features a 3G surface suitable for both training and matches. It is RFU and FIFA approved with a shock pad for enhanced safety and performance. The pitch is frequently used by prominent non-league teams such as Bath City, Mangotsfield United, and Yate Town FC. With seating for 100 spectators, it also serves as the home ground for the college’s elite teams, hosting matches on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Whilst being marked out for football, this pitch can also be used for other contact sports including Football, Rugby, and American Football.“

There are a wide range of grass pitch facilities – including two football pitches which will probably be our preference – along with indoor 3G, sports hall, and rugby and American football. Exactly which facilities you get to use is unclear, but we assume there will be no gridiron training being undertaken.

SGS Colleges which runs the facility has its own football academy which has been responsible for producing a number of male and female professional footballers including Antoine Semenyo, the former Bristol City winger now plying his trade at AFC Bournemouth in the Premier League, and a number of Bristol City Women’s team members (current and former) including Jasmine Matthews, Aimee Palmer, Flo Allen, Georgie Wilson and Maisy Collins.