Posted in News on Oct 21, 2006.
I happen to be amongst the first at breakfast beating the usual early risers the likes of Serge Djiehoua and David Obua to the draw, I move fairly quickly through breakfast. After which I make my way to a nearby coffee shop to join a friend of mine from Benoni, who has come down to Durban to watch the game.
11h00 – 13h00: We all gather at the hotel reception at 11h00 and we learn that our training session planned for the morning has been some what altered, as we move on to a nearby park. Our physiotherapist David Milner runs us through a stretching session followed by a jog through Umhlanga where we are based, our run through takes us along the beach and back to the hotel.
The stretching and the jogging takes us just over an hour, some of the guys straddle behind and the jog turns into a stroll as some of the guys take their time in getting back to the hotel. After lunch I have to do some pre cup final interviews with the SABC, they don’t take too long but the questions are all the same. With a Cup Final so close you basically have your answers mapped out in your mind already so the interviews are quick.
13h00 – 16h00: We are given the afternoon to rest and I do just that as I catch up on some much needed sleep.
16h00 – 19h00: At four pm we all converge on the dining room for afternoon snack time and the start of the final planning and preparation session for Saturday’s Cup Final. During the snack time all the players gather and discuss various issues surrounding Saturday’s game with the coach, the discussion is a healthy one as we take a number of things out of it.
Once the players have given their input into things the coach thereafter gives us a run down on tactics and plans for SuperSport, we will put all of this into use in our final training session, to be held later on Friday evening.
19h00 – 21h45: Our journey to the ABSA Stadium begins and what should be a short 15 minute trip, turns out to be a 45 minute journey as there is a massive Police road block on the road leading from Umhlanga to the stadium. Once we get to the stadium we learn that we will not be able to train on the ABSA Stadium pitch and will have to instead, carry out our practise session and adjacent field.
This obviously does not amuse our team manager Bobby Motaung and the coach who had wanted us to get a feel for the pitch and also get used to the ABSA Stadium lights. We learn from the ground staff at the stadium that because of the persistent rain that fell over the past couple of days, the pitch is soggy and should we run on it we might do some damage to the surface.
The session itself begins slowly and picks up in intensity, once again the goalkeepers begin by training with the goalkeeper coach, we soon join up with the rest of the team to continue the session. This begin the last training session before Saturday’s cup final we go through a number of different drills including you probably guessed it, practising penalties.
There is a lot of tactical work as well in this particular session and we run through the usual drills of dealing with set pieces etc, we also begin to put what he had discussed earlier with the coach into effect. The session goes well and ends with a light jog around the field, again the banter begins at the end of the session and the guys lead by Arthur Zwane crack a number of jokes.
21h45 – 23h00: On our way back to the hotel we once again encounter traffic problems as a result of the police road block, but we patiently sit through the traffic and make our way back to Umhlanga. Because of all of the delays due to the traffic we have dinner later than we would have liked, and after which we are all given a talking to by the coach and with a big final on Saturday it’s straight to bed for us.
