Pre Season
Training in a Spanish beach resort. You can bet we got a lot
of stick about that. And sure enough on the first morning the
coach said "We go to the beach now." The players looked
pleased until they realised the coach meant that the physical
training was a run on the beach! We did have some language problems.
Five
players travelled to sunny Calella De La Costa. Andrew Holohan,Gavin
Maguire,Shane Foster,Conor Morgan and Mark O'Flynn.This was
a tough training camp in an ideal setting. The 70 players on
the camp were of a good standard and the coaches were very friendly
and helpful. It was well organised and run and fairly tough
espeacially when you take into account that the training hall
was extremely hot.
The players were excellent in every
way. They trained hard and did not moan about tough conditions.
They enjoyed their free time but gave a full effort in the training
hall. It was an easy place to be distracted but they kept their
focus while still having an enjoyable time.
An average
day was physical training from 9 to 10.15 followed by table
tennis training from 10.30 to 12.30. There was a good break
in the middle of the day and training started again at 3.30
with physicals till 4.15. from 4.30 to 6.45 was the secondl
TT session of the day. The camp started on Sunday and went on
till the following Friday.
On the Tuesday afternoon there
was a break to go the beach. Then on Friday some of the players
went to the Water Park while some went to visit the Nou Camp
stadium in Barcelona.
It was a successful trip and certainly
a place that you might like to go back to again as the town
and the surroundings were lovely and the weather was fabulous.
we also got an great reception from the spanish people who could
not do enough for us.