Manager Brian Barry-Murphy has spoken about the importance of Dale’s week-long pre-season camp in Portugal…
The squad are due to fly out to the facility on the Algarve on July 4th as part of preparations for the 2019/20 campaign.
It’s a change in venue for Rochdale, with Barry-Murphy opting for Portugal instead of Tenerife, where Dale have visited since 2013.
“I thought it was good for everybody to have a change,” said BBM as he discussed his decision.
“We’ve been going to Tenerife for a number of years – it’s a very good facility and it has been good to us over the years, but I think it’s important for us to be constantly evolving and improving things, and I wanted to take up this opportunity to go to Portugal.
“I have visited the place myself [the Estadio Bela Vista] and I was very pleased with what it offered. It’s an ideal venue for us to start off our preparations in what is a very important part of the season. It's a part of the season that can set the tone for what you want to implement throughout the year.
“It’s a great effort by the club to provide such a great facility for us to go and train at in pre-season, and myself, staff and players are very appreciative of that.
“It gives us an opportunity to implement the plans that we weren’t able to implement at the end of last season because of the close proximity of games leading into the end of the season. It was very much a case of play, rest, recover, play, play, play, play.
“This gives us a chance to put foundations in place for the way we want to play as a team. We’ll put a real emphasis on the type of fitness we want to achieve with the players, as well as target specific areas of fitness and conditioning that we believe are essential to the way we want to play as a team.
“The camp is a great environment for the players to work in. From experience, it’s the work you do on the training pitch and the amount of football work that you can get into these camps that bring the most benefits.
“It’ll allow the players to really understand each other’s game and really start to build good relationships in a footballing sense.”
The club are offering supporters/ sponsors the opportunity to join Barry-Murphy and the squad for part of their stay in Portugal, with a chance to watch the team train. See more details HERE.
BBM says he is very appreciative of anyone who makes the trip.
“If any supporter is willing to invest their hard-earned money in coming out to Portugal with us, then the least we can do is provide them with is access to the team, because it’s a big commitment for them.
“It will give the supporters an insight into certain things that we work on and what we’re trying to implement, and it might help give them a better understanding of what we do and why we do certain things. That will hopefully also be evident when we return to Rochdale for those who can’t make it out to Portugal.
“I’m looking forward to welcoming those who can, and it will be great for the players to see the type of lengths that supporters will go to give them their backing. I’m really appreciative of that.”