Rovers to travel to Holland for pre-season friendly
SLIGO Rovers will play a friendly in the Netherlands in the first week of January as part of their pre-season schedule
The Bit O’ Red will take on RKSV Leonidas on 6 January in Rotterdam. Leonidas are an amateur team and ranked as fourth after Feyenoord, Sparta and Excelsior in the city. They played Derry City in a similar friendly last season.
Rovers will only return to pre-season earlier that week but the opportunity to travel abroad, at very limited cost with the home side hosting the game, is a big boost to Gerard Lyttle’s men in their preparations for the new campaign.
Lyttle explained: “It isn’t about the game as much as an exercise in blending the squad together and team bonding. There are new players and it will help them get to know the lads here.
“We’ve secured the friendly from my own contacts and Gerry Cassidy’s. A number of northern teams have played the game in recent years. Derry City did last season and they were keen again but we managed to get in there so it’s a nice lift for us and really adds to our pre-season. It’s a real bonus.”
The club will not be offering supporter travel as RKSV Leonidas are making arrangement for the Rovers squad. Elsewhere, Rovers have also confirmed away friendlies with Linfield on 15 January and Galway United on 26 January as well as Finn Harps in The Showgrounds on 1 February.
“The most important thing in pre-season is you are tested. That’s what we need. The players have been given off-season fitness programmes and they will return on the first day with a view to being raring to go for the first competitive match.
“We’re not going to get that without decent level of opposition so if we can get another northern team, where they are in season, it would be good.
“With the likes of Galway and Finn Harps in the First Division, it means we have decent games in the locality and we’ll possibly look at playing a Premier Division team depending on how the fixtures play out when they are announced on Tuesday.
“I want to add something other element apart from the trip to the Netherlands because six or seven weeks of training where fitness is the priority needs to be broken up to give the players variety.”
A friendly with Ballisodare United is also in the offing two days after the match with Galway, 28 January, as part of the agreement of their former player John Mahon signing for Rovers.
Lyttle said he will not “panic-buy” in the final stages of completing his squad after seeing some moves not come to fruition recently. The boss is hoping to add three to five players depending on availability in the UK and still a possible signing in the league here.
He said it’s quite possible there will be trialists during pre-season with a view to unearthing a gem, as has happened many times before for Rovers.
“In the UK, there was another one or two things lined up but they are now waiting until closer to January to see what’s on offer and they don’t want to commit just yet because pretty much every club is still looking like us, even those in the top three, so they know it’s be a competitive market.”