Paul Huntington’s Preston North End column: Euxton is going to be great, but I’ll miss Springfields

So it was all change on Tuesday this week when we moved to the new training ground at Euxton.

It has taken us to a much higher level in terms of the facilities available and hopefully it can help the club get to where it wants to be.

For the last few days we’ve been getting used to where everything is, remembering which corridor to go down.

The lads are very impressed with it and for probably 90% of us, it is closer to home.

I’ve got an apartment which is about five minutes drive away.

For the lads who live in Chorley, Leyland, Buckshaw Village, Manchester and Liverpool, it is nearer.

The other day I drove down from my home town Carlisle and it probably took me the same time it would to Springfields.

Euxton is further south but for Springfields you had to cut across to that side of Preston.

I will miss Springfields though, it was where I had trained since July 2012 and it served us well.

In the last few years there was the talk of moving to Ingol and then giving Springfields an update.

The youth team are going to move to Springfields having been at UCLan.

That will be good for the young lads and they will enjoy training and playing there.

What they will find is an extremely good pitch to work on. The main pitch had a lot of money spent on it a couple of years ago.

It has the same dimensions and firmness as Deepdale, while it was usable whatever the weather.

The other couple of pitches sometimes weren’t fit if it had been raining heavily but pitch No.1 was always perfect.

Whatever facilities we have, wherever it is, it is always a pleasure to come in and train with the squad we have.

Everyone here wants to do well, we all want to help push the club forward.

With the international break finished, it is now back to Championship action and the game against Cardiff at Deepdale on Sunday.

This week we trained on Tuesday and Wednesday and had Thursday off.

With the lads back from international duty we will start our final preparations for the Cardiff game.

We signed off before the break with a great win at Brentford and we need to back that up at Deepdale.

The last time we played Cardiff was in June, just after the restart.

For about an hour there was nothing in the game but out of the blue they scored.

We equalised but then Cardiff pushed on to win it with two more goals.

It was horrendous weather from what I recall, there was a thunderstorm and heavy rain for a lot of the game.

Hopefully we will do a lot better this time and get a positive result to push us further up the table.

This is the start of a busy run of games, with weekend and midweek football back-to-back until the next international break in November.

It will mean a lot of focus and hard work.