TRAINING at New Road throughout the winter has always caused Worcestershire problems.

With several floods during most closed seasons the players have to look elsewhere as they try and get themselves into shape for the forthcoming campaign.

Indoor training may not be liked by the players but, when the weather is more unpredictable than getting your luggage at Heathrow Airport's terminal five, it is a neccessity.

This winter, the New Road players headed for the indoor centre at Edgbaston and down to Shrewsbury School to get some much-needed practise.

With the New Road ground so liable to flooding, the County are unable to build any indoor facilities at their home ground but, even if they could, chief executive Mark Newton says it would be unlikely that they would.

Cost and making sure that the centre would be viable is the main reason why the County would be unlikely to take on such a project and, considering they lost over £1million last year, you can see why.

"There is a cost factor," Newton explained. "You can build an indoor cricket centre and it's not that expensive. But it is very hard to run economically and break even.

"I'm afraid to say, and I know I won't please everyone by saying it, we have to concentrate any spare money that we have first and foremost on improving the facilities here just, A' to stay on site, and B' to stay alive.

However, that has not stopped the club looking for somewhere in the county for an indoor facility.

"We can't build an indoor school here, but we are regularly looking at facilites and there are things in the pipeline," Newton said.

"There is a fantastic new sports facility that is being built at Malvern College, which we are very aware of and we have been talking to them about the quality of those facilities with a view to using them when it's built, but that is not for sometime.

"We have had good conversations with them. There is also a development going on at Hindlip - a huge new leisure facility - which, hopefully if it gets through planning, will have cricket facilities.

"I think there are in the next two or three years real possibilities of high quality facilities being available to us."