It’s safe to say this has been the best Monday training session ever! There were only a few of us actually out training because the Reserves had included a number of youngsters in their ranks and while I’d like to have been involved I wouldn’t have missed training today for the world.
Training was taken by Peter Beardsley who introduced us all to Gazza who just dropped in to join in training with us.
We had a game of catch head catch which was really fun and we then went into some small sided games. Here am I almost fresh out of school and I’m training with two legends of the game who have both played more England games than I have youth games as things stand! Unbelievable! Gazza was brilliant, he had us all in hysterics, joking and laughing around but as soon as the training got going he still showed that us that you have to concentrate and apply yourself.
The things that they could both still do on the ball just simply takes your breath away and your left thinking about how good they actually were as players if this is them in retirement! I consider myself privileged and lucky to have been on the same training pitch to learn from two of the greatest Newcastle and England legends.
Tuesday couldn’t really live up to Monday’s billing for obvious reasons and we had a couple of sessions that related to attacking and defending before taking on an afternoon 11 v 11 session which proved a good work out.
On Thursday, we trained with a few of the reserve players. After decent warm up we went into some possession.
It was really good session everyone, everyone was sharp and closing down the ball quickly which it is essential to do in such games and then the session was progressed to bring in some small sided goals. Closing down and working hard for each other is key when you’re playing possession if one of your team doesn’t do the job he is supposed to you end up chasing the ball for a long, long time and subsequently as soon as you do win it back you find that you give it away again cheaply because you’re tired. So when you watch games on TV and you seem teams like Man Utd and Barcelona retaining possession for long periods spare a thought for the players opposing them because it’s a process that gradually wears people down.
On Friday we finished our college work just after 11am and then headed out on to the training pitch where we worked on shape and defending in preparation for our fixture with Leeds Utd.
This week I also had my first interview with Kenny. All the first years get one at some point in the season. It was scary as I didn’t know what he was going to say. However it went down ok, and I was told I had to work on improving my heading.
