Pre-Season Training Camp - Day 3 - Tuesday 7^th July 2009

Well the USA and the rest of the World is safe from a Molecular DNA Computer attack for another day and most of the players arrived at 8am for breakfast, I say most of the players as there were a few stragglers, me included, but bringing up the rear, and not for the first time, was Will Buckley.

Will is roomed with Tom Kennedy and Tom is having to work overtime looking after Will. I think he started off gently by giving him the odd prod before he went in to the bathroom, but having returned from the little boys' room to find Will still unconscious, Tom has now resorted to clapping loudly in front of Wills face.

The treatment room is the hive of activity immediately after breakfast as the player queue up to see Andy, Guy and John for rubs and strapping's, and as you can imagine there is quite an amount of banter filling the air. This is all good hearted fun.

With the sun creeping over the mountain and the temperatures starting to rise the lads make their way down to the training ground for the morning session. Meanwhile the staff are busy setting out the pitch with their cones, poles, hurdles, manikins and hoops in readiness for the session.

Waterboy and Jack toddle off back to the hotel to fill the 5 gallon drinks dispenser with the isotonic mix and sweet talk the hotel staff in to letting us have some ice. Ice, surprisingly, seems to be as rare as the preverbal rocking horse poo round here. You would think with the climate over here ice was almost as available as fresh air, but boy when you ask for some everyone looks at you as though you've got two heads.

Having filled the drinks containers the ice hunt doesn't end there. Yes we've managed to sort the drinks out but now we have the problem of getting enough ice for the ice baths, which are due at around 11.45 at the end of the session. Now to make the search for ice even harder the Gaffer wants us to specifically get that slow melting ice, the stuff that we've managed to source so far from the hotel has been that quick melting stuff and the Gaffer is not happy with it.

Now we're about 10km from a major road but we're told the big Carrefore Supermercado at Estepona is bound to have some ice, so off we trek for about 20km and find the aforementioned super store.

In store it looks to have everything from a bikini to a bike to a tin of beans but can we find the ice, can we hell as like. Now I know it's not very male like to ask for directions or help but time is not on our side and vanity is put to one side. So here we go mentioning this word ice again and, again everyone gives us that "you've got two heads" look. We get pointed to the fish counter where there is every fish you can think of all laid out on beds of ice.

Now Jack and I can be quite cute when we want to be and we quickly agree that if we start shovelling the ice from underneath their beautifully laid out fish display the natives are likely to get a little upset. So we again try speaking the word ice and get those familiar aggressive looks. Now, whether this is really down to the magic "ice" word being used or that we are just two stupid "Brits" in shorts talking a stupid language we're not really sure.

We toddle off to the customer service desk in the hope that someone will not be offended at the ice word and/or speak a little English. We seemed to get a breakthrough as we are led off by this person but we're heading back to the fish counter again. Oh no here we go again, we think. However, we are mistaken as we are pointed to a freezer that is actually behind the counter of the fish department. We notice a sign on it that looks to talk about cubes helio, and think we've cracked it, and yes we have! This is where they sell the ice cubes from. Thank goodness for that! No, wait a minute, there is only one bag in the bottom of the freezer and even that one is half split and half empty. We just knew what the answer was going to be when we asked if there was any in the back. We left this not so quite super store absolutely iceless.

Now if we show up back at the training ground without any ice - no forget that - if we can't find any ice the best thing to do is go straight to the airport and change our flights. So we are now driving the 20km back looking for anything that looks like a supermercado and take a couple of exits off the dual carriageway in search of ice, each diversion proved fruitless. Then Jack spots a supermercado on the other side of the carriageway and I quickly look for an exit but there isn't one, then Jack comes up trumps again as he notices a foot bridge across the carriageway, I slam the anchors on and am very lucky to find a lay-by where we can park.

We troop off over the footbridge almost resigned to the fact that the big supermarket didn't have any ice and the likelihood was that this little thing wouldn't have any either. We deposit our one euro in the trolley slot and I say to Jack that doing that was probably a waste of time and that we should check inside to see if they have actually got any first. We mention the ice word again but don't get that alien look. Instead we get a finger pointing to a corner and a nearly smile. Jack and I don't get too excited; we've done that before and only get disappointed. We spot a few freezers but we don't want ice cream or McCain oven chips, and then low and behold we get to the final freezer and yes "there is gold in them there hills", there is enough ice to take down the Titanic again.

I don't know how stupid Jack and I will have looked to the many motorists zooming underneath us as we struggled over that foot bridge with 20 x 1 kilo bags of ice pulling our arms out of our sockets but neither of us really cared about that, we should just about get back in time for the ice baths at the end of the training session.

My next task was to get back to Malaga airport to see if I could recover the lost bag of drinks and equipment from Sunday. The journey should have taken me about 45 minutes but the Costa Del Sol proved that its road network could be just as frustrating as the M62 on a weekday morning. The road works over here are just the same as at home - loads of cones and no one working.

I arrived at the airport very hot and bothered about 90 minutes later and made my way to the arrivals lounge and specifically the lost baggage desk. Iberia were the handling company and a very helpful young lady listened to my tale of woe over the lost bag. She disappeared to try and find the bag but came back empty handed, she then invited me to have a look for myself, I found a lot of bags, which in itself was a bit worrying but ours wasn't amongst them.

The helpful lady then completed a claim form and said she would check with their counterparts in Manchester as all lost baggage was logged and ours was quite distinct. Again unfortunately there was no trace of our bag in Manchester, which left me thinking, well it's not there and it's not here so is it still hovering at 35,000 feet.

I arrived back at the hotel as the lads were finishing their lunch around 2.30pm, unfortunately I didn't witness this session so I can't tell you a great deal about it. I did speak to Guy Proctor who told me that the lads had worked very hard for two and a half hours through quite an intense session.

I spent the afternoon writing up the diary and tending to a few bits of business via the mobile and I must confess to a little siesta at about 5pm.

At 6.15 I took my laundry down for Jack and then headed towards the training pitch with drinks in hand. The Gaffer, Flicker, Guy, John and Ian were already on the pitch setting out the equipment ready for the evening session.

The players were again keen to get started and the session kicked off early again at 6.45pm. John and Guy took the lads through their warm-ups using the circuit that they had set up. The boys were then split up into threes and were working some close ball control with two players feeding the other player a ball both to the right and left foot and at a steady pace.

The main part of the session was an 11 v 11 and was conducted by the Gaffer using the whole of the pitch. There seemed to be different formations used at different times. I noticed on one team for part of the game Adam Le Fondre, John Shaw and Kallum Higginbotham were playing up front while there defence was made up of Marcus Holness, Craig Dawson and Chris Brown. On the other side for part of the time Chris Dagnall was playing up front on his own and had been given specific instructions by the Gaffer what to do with his marker.

The game was stopped at different times by the gaffer to talk through different aspects of play and positioning and exactly what he was looking for in various situations. I won't go in to too much detail about the rest of the teams and where they played as too much may be read in to it, and this was an exercise taking place on the training pitch. For the record though the red bibs beat the yellow bibs by two goals to one. Adam Le Fondre scored both red bib goals and Gary Jones with a sweet chip from the right scored the yellow bibs goal.

After the session on the training pitch was complete John Lucas relieved the players of the dreaded ice bath and took the players up to the hotel pool to warm down with exercises in the water.

Dinner was at 9pm and following dinner the Gaffer got the tactics board out and went through some of the work that the players had done out on the training ground. He talked of do's and don't and how we should play on our strengths. It was interesting and it was interactive as the players comments were sought and discussions took place.

After dinner there were two players up for songs. Jason Kennedy was first up and he took to the chair with sheet music and words in one had and a banana microphone in the other. Jason treated us to a fairly unknown song (unknown to me because I'm probably too old) the song was by the Kings of Leon and I think it was called either use somebody or need somebody. Anyway Jason had obviously put quite a bit of time in to this and did really well. Next on the banana mic was young Matt Edwards. Matt chose an old favourite and one that will have gone down well with the Gaffer, he sang Wonderwall by Oasis and naturally everyone joined in.

After dinner it was time to relax and after five hours intense training the players will find different ways of doing this, one small group gathered in one corner for a game of snap while others went for a walk or went to their rooms for an early night.

Ciaran Toner is a little bit different and is quite a talented young man. In addition to the skills that he shows us on the pitch some of you may be aware that he plays the guitar very well. I found Ciaran after dinner sitting at the hotel piano playing a number of tunes, I left him to relax in his own way as he played Lionel Ritchie's Easy Like A Sunday Morning.

I did have a trip out up to the town, which is a short walk up the hill so I took the car, I had a relaxing drink of diet cola with the staff and day three drifted into day four, so with today's diary still to finish we'll leave it there for today.