Tembo welcomes back the ‘family’
TRAINING: GOING THROUGH DRILLS IN GROUPS OF FIVE
Kaitano Tembo says the excitement was tangible at Megawatt Park in the past two days after SuperSport United became the first Gauteng Absa Premiership side to return to training since the government gave teams the green-light to resume.
The Matsatsantsa A Pitori head coach said he had to take his players through their drills in groups of five as that is the limit of players allowed on the pitch simultaneously.
“The main thing for us was just to get back and see each other again after a long time. Three months was a very long for us because we are like family and are used to one other. We spent a lot of time together but after being apart for so long the excitement was there. They have been training in isolation at home and it is not the same as training in the proper environment,” he told Phakaaathi.
“You just cannot have too many players on the pitch. When we start going into group training, probably next week, then we can have 10 players on the pitch. It is something that we have to adapt to, try and work towards and make sure that we improve the players’ fitness levels,” he added.
On Sunday and yesterday,
Tembo said he had to take training for about four hours, and told us how it was structured.
“For now we are still doing individual training which means there is no contact, only five players are allowed to be on the field at any given time so it boils down to about four hours of training,” he explained.
Tembo continued: “We break it into different parts of our training sessions whereby we start with activation then strength work and then we go to the technical part, which is more with the ball. It is a challenge because it is something new but we have been coping, and you could see the excitement of doing what they love and being around each other.”