Training Grounds: Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground, Wolves

Wolverhampton Wanderers is a football club that's committed to doing things a little differently, whether that means the development of a world-beating eSports Division or the launching of an innovative club-affiliated record label. Ultimately, they operate on the basis that you need to be able to think outside the box if you want to compete with the best clubs in the Premier League on a budget that simply doesn't match up to the likes of Manchester City or Chelsea. And a lot of this work goes on behind the scenes, with the regular football fan rarely getting a glimpse in. That's something where aiming to combat in our guide to the world's best training grounds.

Wolves' training ground is more central to the club's daily operations than anywhere else. This is the place that the players, coaches, analysts, sport science experts, and various other members of staff work each day to ensure that plays are adequately prepared for each game. And in this article, we'll be diving into exactly what facilities are on offer here.

This comprehensive guide will explore the key features of the Wolves training ground, explaining where the site is situated, how long the club has used it as their home, and the recent changes and developments that have taken place at the Wolves training centre. Later on, we'll look at any future plans that exist here. But let's start with the basics.

What Is The Name Of The Wolves Training Ground?

While some training grounds are situated miles away from the town or city their team represents, others are extremely convenient. Take Manchester City's Etihad Campus, for example — after Sheikh Mansour's takeover of the club in 2008, the building of a brand new training complex right next to the Etihad Stadium brought all of City's operations onto one area of East Manchester. And down in the west Midlands, Wolves is another club that trains only a stone's throw from the home ground.

To be precise, the Wolves training ground is around a mile and a half from Molineux, the club's stadium. Situated in the Compton area of Wolverhampton, it's about a half-hour walk away, and it's been their home since its grand opening in 2005. The site is called the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground, named after the club's legendary former owner and Life President Sir Jack Hayward. 

Before that 2005 move, Wolves' coaching situation was far from ideal. They were forced to sell their training ground in the Castlecroft area of Wolverhampton in the late 1980s, due to financial difficulties. Throughout the nineties and early noughties, they didn't have a permanent club-owned site, so moving into the Sir Jack Hayward ground was an important step. Central to this progress was former manager Graham Taylor, who initiated the training ground plans in the early 1990s.  But since those days, elite football has moved on a fair bit, and that's reflected at the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground. Let's take a look at some of the key changes and developments that have taken place since in recent years.

How Has The Wolves Training Ground Changed In Recent Years?

When lifelong fan Jack Hayward took ownership of Wolves in 1990, he began redeveloping Molineux into a modern all-seater stadium, pushing the club out of a period of instability and underperformance and towards a much brighter future — at the time of asking, they're having their longest spell in the top flight for decades.

And it's not just Molineux that's seen major redevelopment as part of this bid for greater stability and higher performance. In July 2011 (six years after the opening of the new training ground), it was announced that the Compton Park area was going to be seriously revamped. The plans saw Wolves build a new indoor pitch and improve their facilities in order to create a 'Category 1' Premier League Academy (the highest possible ranking). Former Wolves owner Steve Morgan used his construction company Redrow, in collaboration with other organisations such as the University of Wolverhampton, to bring the £50 million project to life. The facilities were modernised and made slicker, and progress has only continued since then, with some other significant changes taking place at Compton Park in the past 18 months.

In a series of upgrades to the site that cost several million pounds, the canteen area has been expanded, with a designated long table for all first-team players and coaches to eat at, while a new chef offers fine-tuned diets for players. Elsewhere, a pre-training warm-up area has been installed, equipped with weight and cardio equipment for players. And during downtime, there's even a mini cricket pitch for those who want a break from football. But we'll discuss these details a lot more in the next section of our Wolves training ground guide…

Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground: Facilities, Size, and Dimensions

The original Compton Park training centre cost £4.6 million to build, but plenty more has been spent on the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground since then. Symbolising the club's rapid growth, serious work has gone into enhancing the facilities on offer at Compton Park and ensuring the site is in line with the best training grounds in the country.

Outside, there are two state-of-the-art Desso Grassmaster hybrid pitches (part plastic, part grass, costing £2m), both of which replicate the Molineux turf exactly, in terms of specification, size, and touch. One of those pitches is floodlit, allowing for evening training sessions (or just late afternoon stints in those dark winter months), while the other pitch has undersoil heating. These two pitches are at the rear of the training ground, in a secluded spot surrounded by trees to ensure as much privacy as possible.

The main building's specialist recovery room helps injured players get back to fitness using a small one-man swimming pool equipped with a treadmill for running, as well as other rehab facilities. There are a load of offices for analysts, coaches, and recruitment staff members, as well as a new press conference room that can fit around 60 journalists.

The recent building of a separate academy building and an indoor full-size pitch has played an important role in attracting elite players such as Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, and Diego Costa to the club. There's a two-storey building that contains five high-quality undersoil pitches, eleven changing rooms, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, and a hydrotherapy pool. The medical and physiotherapy facilities are second to none; in fact, Wolves were the first British sports club to establish a fully accredited professional sports laboratory, based on AC Milan's Milanello model.

The training ground is also packed with fascinating features designed to vary every training session and keep players as engaged as possible, with that aforementioned mini cricket pitch, and the well-equipped warm-up area being great examples of that. There's also a head tennis area surrounded by wolf-based graffiti (you may have seen this on social media or in 'Code Red', the documentary about Raul Jimenez's recovery from career-threatening injury).

How Does The Wolves Training Ground Compare To Other Premier League Training Centres?

Back when Wolves' training ground was first conceptualised, the club arguably had one of the most precarious coaching site situations in English league football. But things have come on a long way since then. Nowadays, it's undeniable that the Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground is more than good enough for an established Premier League side such as Wolverhampton Wanderers. It contains a wide range of impressive facilities and pieces of technology that ensure players are able to maintain high standards, and its quality is shown by the calibre of players Wolves have been able to sign in recent years.

Another useful indicator of how Compton Park compares with other British training centres is the fact that Gareth Southgate chose for his England side to use Wolverhampton's ground as a national team training base. During preparations for Nations League games at Molineux against Italy and Hungary last year, England's men's team could be seen in various social media posts picturing them at the Sir Jack Hayward ground, with those posts highlighting the standard of facilities on offer at the Wolverhampton Wanderers site.

Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground: Plans For The Future?

The Sir Jack Hayward Training Ground is in better shape than ever before. Investments over the past decade or so have brought the place up to scratch, shifting it from a slightly knackered old ground with Portakabins, potholes, and puddles, to a world-class centre that was recently chosen as the training base for Gareth Southgate's England side (despite the fact that the FA's National Football Centre St. George's Park is only an hour's drive away).

That being said, given Wolverhampton Wanderers' consistently forward-thinking mindset as a club, we wouldn't be surprised to see some additional work take place in the coming years, as Wolves seek to further establish their Premier League status and build on their qualification for the Europa League a few years back. At the time of writing, there are now widely-understood plans for expansion, but that could change in the future.

Interested in finding out more about some of the Premier League's most impressive coaching facilities? Our blog is packed with informative training ground guides just like this one. Why not start by checking out our guide to Chelsea's Cobham Training Centre? While the Blues may be having a difficult time right now, this site shows that the club has everything needed in order to compete at the very top.