STAYING IN SHAPE IS KEY NOW

IT’S fair to say that the way players look after themselves in the close season has changed a lot since my playing days.

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In my time, players couldn't wait to get off on holiday at the end of the season and didn’t really worry about playing football again until two or three weeks before we started back.

You'd have ‘a good summer’, for want of a better phrase, and then it would be a case of running, and more running, at the start of pre-season. There would be sessions where we'd be told — ‘just bring your running shoes, don’t worry about balls and boots’!

Horrible

Nowadays they will do the running with the ball and get it in that way. We would have to go to big parks and climb the hills. And everyone would have to go again if someone didn’t get within the group time allowed.

I’m not the smallest guy so miles and miles of runs —and bleep tests — were horrible. What made it worse when you were doing those runs was the heat - it always seemed to be in the hottest weeks of the year. And you could count on it being hot in the first few games of the season as well.