Rochdale AFC

Tenerife Training Camp

      Day 6 Tuesday 8th July 2014

 I did well again yesterday and got into bed before midnight with had enough left in the batteries to have a good read.  I also think that psychologically knowing we were still on rest, relax and recover on Tuesday morning was a good feeling. I was still up at 7.30am and slowly manoeuvred myself in to the day with a shave and shower. I had said to Jack that I would be down to breakfast around 9ish and on my way to breakfast I noticed Scott on the way back from his. I called in at the treatment room but that was locked up, there was a good reason for that as Thorpey was in the dining room having his breakfast and he told me Gaz was making the most of the R and R and having a lie in bed.

I couldn't see any of the players in the dining room but Steve, Tony, AK, Keith Snr were already down, Jamie was the first player to appear and then others meandered their way through. I should make a special note and wish a belated happy birthday to Peter Vincenti who hit 28 yesterday and that one got past me.

With the morning to ourselves I had said to our Jack and AK that I might go for a drive to see a few different parts of the island and they could come with me. Apparently Beechy had gone off on his hire bike at 7am and was doing some cycling in the mountains. After breakfast I headed back to my room as there was a few more emails I needed to tend to, on my way back I called back in at the treatment room as Thorpey had told me at breakfast that he was open for business at 10am. Hendo was on Thorpeys bed having his feet repaired and prepared and Doney had just come out looking not too well at all. Doney said he thought he had suffered from some sun stroke as he had felt ill the day before and had come back and had vomited yesterday and this morning, he was busy taking on water and had taken some tablets that Thorpey had given him and was starting to feel a little better now that he had thrown up.

This feeling that Doney was experiencing had come solely from his exposure to the sun during training sessions and not from sun bathing as he hadn't been doing any of that he prefers to rest on his bed, I know he creams up each session because I've seen him putting dollops of cream on. I also know that he trains hard and gives his all in each of the sessions, hopefully he will be ok for this afternoon’s session.

There was quite a bit of banter going on in the treatment room, Gaz had complained about being constipated and then showed us a red spiked object that he’d passed to relieve the pain. Kevin got quite a bit of stick for the use of the word erroneous the word the night before, it was how he said it and the context that amused everyone and then they tried to get him to spell it, the correct way and not his version. We then moved on to an intelligent conversation and the book that Hendo is reading at the moment that is titled “Insanely Simple”, look it up, if Hendo is reading it, you can bet its worth a read.  I managed to find a gap in the treatment room and Gaz gave me some treatment on my calf which did it the world of good, Gaz was very good and was gentle with me for which I was very grateful because I know he know where to go to hit the spot. Hendo was quite amused to find me face down on the fizz bed getting treatment and was even more amused when he realised how I’d done my calf on the stairs coming out of the gym having been ok for the hours exercise in the gym. By the time I got off the treatment table a few more players had arrived for repairs to their feet and mainly their feet, Jack had just got off Thorpey's bed after having his feet patched up and BBM was next on. I just mentioned Jack had had his feet patched up but it is worth mentioning again the are put in by the back room staff and here was Gaz and Thorpey open for business for a few hours treatment and then they were off to T3 at 12 noon for individual rehab sessions with Jack and Joel and then it would be back for lunch and a short break before opening up the treatment room again at 3 in preparation for this afternoons training session.

At about 11am I met Our Jack and AK in reception for our sightseeing trip, my motivation was similar to Jack and AK's in that I wanted to see some more parts of the island as I hadn't realised how big it was, although I'm not too sure what size I had in mind, my other motivation was to try and comply with the instruction of the receptionist at the car hire desk after she’d ripped me off for a full tank of petrol at their premium over the top prices and she told me to bring it back empty, I've given up on the sarcastic comment of it won't come back if it's empty but I will do my damnedest to stay in the groove of being a grumpy old man and if I've got to do 200 circuits of the car park and push it in to a parking space, I'll do it.

Talking of grumpy old men, I think me and Keith Snr recognise that we could be slipping in to this age bracket but we've held it together pretty well this week, most of the time, anyway. So my plan was to go from our starting position, which is at about twenty five past to as you look at the island and then stay close to the coast heading in a north westerly direction and continue clockwise and come back around from the half past area of the island. We hadn't set off very long before it was obvious that we were going up and up and it was still a little overcast at this time. We got so far and then decided to come of the main road and head for Playa De San Juan, it was a bit hairy on these roads as they were very narrow with no barriers and some very serious drops to our right if I got it wrong, I had thoughts that the roads were like the ones that you would find in Peru if you were heading towards Machu Picchu (one of the seven wonders of the world Machu Picchu dates back to the 15th century and is an Inka site that is 7970 feet above sea level in the Cusco Regionmin of Peru. Not just an adventure but also and education) anyway as we headed down on these roads Our Jack was noticeably bricking it in the back while AK also had his life in my hands and was trusting me as well as bricking it like me in the front. Once down to a safe level having past a billion banana trees on the way down (did you know bananas grow upwards, that little educational note comes from Our Jack) we continued in a clockwise direction and hit Los Gigantes, which is a quaint little place that is full of streets where you can only drive one way, which it did a few times even if it was the wrong way. The plan was to head back up in to the mountains continuing in a clockwise direction and then come inland and circle through the mountains and then back down and back to the hotel for lunch. We did succeed with the first part of the plan and got quite high up in the mountains where there are some stunning views but we missed a turning somewhere and ended up coming back on part of the road that we'd gone out on. I had some good new while we were out in the morning as I got a call from the estate agent of the people we are buying a house from and we have finally got a completion date for the purchase, it's a long story that I won't go in to but it started 18 months ago selling ours, three surveys later and having viewed 46 houses and having moved in to a temporary rental property back in February it now looks as though there is a finishing line, I phoned Mrs G to put her out of her misery.

Once back at the hotel around 1.15pm we went straight in to lunch where the majority of our party were outside on the patio having Lunch. Beechy told us he hadn't been back long and had done five hours cycling up in to the hills, he had met an English guy who was out here training as an Olympic triathlon. Hendo gave Kevin some stick as well as congratulating him on the mountain of ice cream that he had managed to get in a desert dish, he referred to it as a mountain that Beechy could cycle up. After lunch it was back to the room for some typing time ahead of the training session later today, I also managed to have a good read as well.

The afternoon session was due to start at 4.45 and it was noticeably hot outside and so I creamed up well ahead of what I was anticipating would be a long touch session for the lads, it was in fact 33C. Unfortunately in addition to Joel and Jack who had knee and groin injuries respectively, we now had Lundy and Ollie who had to sit out the main training session due to blisters, they were going to go up to the Pool area and do some swimming and upper body exercises. Also, Matthew Done was unable to join the session as he was still feeling ill from his sun stroke. I had taken a sneak look at The Gaffers flip chart to see what he had in store for the lads before he took the lads through it, in the main Beechy was going to run the session with Kevin doing the warm ups and the warm downs. The lads had been split in to two teams of 8 plus the goalkeepers, the plan was also that the Gaffer and BBM would be floating players in red who could play for the team in possession of the ball, which then turned the game from 8 v 8 to 8 v 10. The pitch was 60 (Tony Ellis) meters long, which is longer than your normal metre, on the touch line were yellow poles 20 (Tony Ellis) metres from each goal line and these were commensurate with the size of the pitch because Tony measured these as well, there were also two red pole on each touch line as half way line markers.

 Beechy was the referee with Kevin and Fradders his assistants. The two teams were, blue: Raff, Ash, Tanz, Bastien, Callum, Peter, Cameron and Scott. The white team was: Rhys, Sean, Rosey, Andrew, Jamie, Hendo, Joe and George. The significance of the yellow poles that were 20 metres from the goal line was to push the defenders out to the part of the pitch to press the play and encourage them to protect the centre of the pitch. The game was to be of 60 minutes duration and that in turn was split in to three segments, the first segment would be normal open football, the second segment would be no overhead height, whether that was Joe Bunneys head or Jamie Allen's I'm not sure but it obviously changes the way that you play the game, the final segment was two touch football, which again changes the way you play the game. It was quite interesting to watch this session because the blue team went off like a train and had a very comfortable lead but as the session progressed and the restrictions of no overhead height and then the two touch section the white team came back and I think there was only one goal in it at the end.

At the end of each of the segments the Gaffer had the players over and talked them through various elements of the play that he had watched, collectively and individually the Gaffer will offer critiques and advice to get his point across. Beechy had done quite a bit of ball work in teams prior to the start of the main session and that had intensity to it. Kevin did a rather longer than normal warm down that lasted 30 minutes but also included some core work. This was a tough long session and it was 7.45 before we got back to the hotel and too late for me to go for a swim so I set for just a shower.

It turned out to be 8.30 before I went down to dinner and most of our part were also later than normal but looking to get fed and then find a good perch to watch the Brasilia v Germany World Cup semi-final. I managed to get a few words with our analyst Fradders as I had heard he had worked out the average age of the squad to be 23.8 but he has to confirm that to me, imagine what it would be without BBM and Steve in there, although Jonny does drag it the other way. Fradders was saying that the players had marked that session across 7,8 and 9. Fradders also explained that the players had reported for this session weighing the most they had this week but that was exactly what they expected as they hoped that during the rest, relax and recovery period they would refuel and that was what they were witnessing.

Fradders went on to say that they had lost on average more fluid during this session than they had done any other session this week, including the double session days and that could be fatigue but also the effort that they had put in and hence the marks of 7, 8 and 9, Fradders reckons the lads were losing about 2.5 kg (5 lbs in old money) in weight and this was equivalent to 2.5 litres of fluid. After dinner I went to my room to watch the football and finish the diary, I passed quite a few players in the lounge watching the game and at that point Germany were one up and just scoring their second, they scored two more goals while I had a quick chat with Tony and Peter and by the time I'd got up to my room and turned the television on the Germans had scored another one, game over with an hour still on the clock. The German manager, Joachim Low's half time team talk was pretty easy but what do you say if you are Luiz Felipe Scolari, bless (desperately, defeated and deflated bless).