DISTANT MEMORY
Players will need to accept that old habits have to go ..they will need to use routines that are alien to them
It’s days rather than weeks now in the countdown to get the doors re-opened at Livingston.
It will require a re- education for players and staff on the rights and wrongs of training post coronavirus lockdown.
I’ve been compiling my own dossier as the players are going to have questions and it’s about coming up with the right answers.
Why are we doing this or that? We need to try to provide them with a clearer picture of why they can be on a training pitch one minute and the next we are asking them to segregate.
There will no doubt be trial and error but it will also be led by a voice of experience from an old team-mate of mine called Matt Bloomfield.
The feedback from the Wycombe Wanderers skipper is that the whole experience of being phased back into training is surreal and his insight will prove invaluable.
Some detail on training procedures and what’s needed to be done and how to proceed. You go from 12 weeks of relative inactivity and ticking over to being smack bang into it.
Matt has had three-and-a-half weeks to get ready for two of the biggest games of his l ife. Tomorrow and next Friday are Wycombe’s League One play- off games against Fleetwood Town.
But there are major hurdles to be cleared. Players don’t know if they are undercooked in terms of being game ready and it’s a bit of a Catch 22 situation.
Matt’s f irst week was mainly
one-to-one sessions with some other work within small groups. That progressed to contact sessions and being tested for the virus twice a week.
I’m reliably informed the testing part of it is not pleasant and certainly not something I’m looking forward to!
The Wycombe players travel to training individually, they change in isolation and practice social distancing.
Then they get out onto the pitch and start battering into one another.
Matt said he’s tackling, heading and sweating through sessions and then heading back inside to social distance again, shower and head off home again.
But knowing Matt he’ll have slide tackled someone who’ll have landed on top of him, so much for social distancing!
When Wycombe go to games they have to book two team buses as players aren’t allowed to sit next to one another.
So as Livingston look to get back in training, I need to be armed with the tools to make it as safe as possible and certain norms will go out of the window.
Old habits will have to go, nobody can just drink from someone else’s water bottle, no matter how much you are gasping for a drink.
I’ve had to explain that to my own kids never mind the Livi lads.
We will face getting into a routine which will be alien to what we have been used to.
Mornings would involve having a bit of banter and fun, boys would be sprayed with water, players would be jumping out of cupboards and towels would be rolled up for a wee lashing and bum burn.
Those good old days will feel a long time ago in a sanitised environment but we need to be careful we don’t lose the fun which is in our dressing-room DNA.
The new normal will be more professional and clinical. To a certain extent the fun police will be in force for games and training.
There is clearly going to be drastic change in the overall climate but we need to be careful as a club that we don’t lose our identity.
We are a close group and we need to work wi t h i n t h i s new environment to maintain what makes us that bit different and united.
That camaraderie and bond must stay strong and I’m sure we will still be taking the mickey out of one another.
There’s no doubt everyone in football could do with a laugh just now.
As a football fan, I’m just sick and fed up of listening to the same old things being argued over, it’s doing my box in.
So the sooner we can get the ball back out
Good old days will feel long time ago in a sanitised environment but we can’t lose the fun which is in our dressing room DNA