St Andrews Diary: Day Three

Thursday, July 20th 2017

Performance analysis and gym sessions are on the cards for both teams this morning. Luke Williams leads the analysis, while Ricky Messiah and Patrick Orme take the gym sessions.

Luke focuses on yesterdays game, highlighting the Under-23s build up play and pressing styles as key features. Both teams listen intently and offer there input as to where and what could of been done differently.

Patrick and Ricky have the lads working hard in the gym, with a full routine including squats, bench press and chin ups.

In the afternoon it’s out on to the pitches for the first technical drills of the day.

This week both teams have taken advantage of the drone that George Lawley and Rob Wormald have brought along. It offers a tactical view of the matches plus training sessions, allowing the players to see what is happening around them.

Once the afternoon session is finished, the players have an hour to relax before dinner.

Then its time for the main event of the night, multi sport. Theres badminton, table tennis and basketball on offer the lads, and they take full advantage. It offers a great opportunity for everyone to blow off a bit of steam and have a laugh. The staff even get in to the sport, with Ali Hines and Ricky Massiah the reigning champions of badminton.

On the other hand, George Nurse shows everybody his well, uhhh ‘interesting’ basketball skills. To be fair to him though, he had the confidence! Harvey Smith was undoubtedly the table tennis champion, I reckon it was idea to play winner stays on!