Football players ignore need for summer training

Press, 21 October 1987, Page 54

Football players ignore need for summer training

By

JOHN COFFEY

A scheme to assist rugby league and rugby union players in Canter* bury realise their full potential has so far met with a disappointingly negative response. Approaches to clubs In both codes had been most discouraging, said Gary Morell, a former premier rugby league player with Linwood, who is keen to set up an off-season training clinic in Christchurch.

Mr Morell and two men prominent in athletics as participants and coaches, Clarrie Reece and Bruce Milne, still have hopes of getting their summer programme for footballers under way early next month.

They sent letters to all rugby league and rugby union clubs in Canterbury without receiving one reply, and Mr Morell has since made telephone contact with most of the province's rugby league clubs.

"Everybody I have talked to agrees It is a great Idea," said Mr Morell, "but that Is where the enthusiasm seems to end.”

Mr Morell’s Interest in proper conditioning began when the renowned New Zealand track coach, Arthur Lydiard, was Involved with a charity run organised by the Linwood Rugby League Club 10

years ago. "It is typical of the infamous New Zealand clobbering machine that a person like Lydiard, a man capable of changing the face of world sport, should have to go overseas to make a living," said Mr Morell. He believes that this country's rugby codes have been content to exist on "myths and legends" for too long. "We are brought up on tales of how blokes could walk out of the West Coast bush and take on the best rugby league forwards overseas, how Kevin Skinner fixed the Springboks in '56. "But television has taken the myths out of the sports. It shows all too clearly that unless you are big, strong, fast and fit you just will not make it to the top,” he said. "The average veteran athlete puts in more commitment than most footballers, even some internationals, of either code. And when you put a footballer’s training schedule up against that of someone like Erin Baker it is a sick joke." Mr Morell admits to being "the laziest bastard of all time" in his youth, and quite happily joined in the hard-playing, harddrinking image of New Zealand rugby.

"Twenty years ago a player who worked on his fitness the whole year round was a rarity, someone to be treated with suspicion. "But the old macho thing doesn’t work anymore. Only by doing hard work will the young blokes develop the tough mental attitude required. "Sydney first grade rugby league is the toughest football arena In the world, yet the pin-up boy is Wayne Pearce — a non-drlnker, non-smoker, schoolteacher role model, a clean-cut figure on and off the field,” said Mr Morell.

The success of the former Linwood and Canterbury prop, Brent Todd, In his first Sydney season was a tribute to his determined attitude and the rigorous summer scheme he followed in achieving national water polo honours, he said. A rugby union equivalent was Murray Davie. "When I was playing there was no direction, no-one to lead. There was no such thing as sports medicine, very little attention was paid to diet and nutrition. There is no barrier to becoming a world-class footballer as long as someone Is there to lead." Mr Morell found confirmation for his ideas In

the methods of the new Kiwi coach, Tony Gordon, who spent last summer preparing an elite squad from which the test team which upset Australia at Brisbane was chosen.

While basing his Ideal fitness programme 1 on those designed by the powerful Sydney clubs, Mr Morell Is adamant that Canterbury and other provinces are steadily falling behind Auckland, with the gap threatening to widen to alarming proportions.

Aged 35, Mr Morell spends "at least a couple of hours” each day keeping himself In shape, and Is not offering aspiring young All Blacks or Kiwis an easy path to achieve their ambitions. The fitness course they will be offered does not Include days off, and Includes roadwork and gymnasium training. But he Intends to Inject variations by involving sportsmen who climbed their particular mountains, such as Mark Broadhurst and Kevin Barry, jun.

"There is more Incentive than ever for a young man to want to succeed, but it will not happen on a summer schedule comprising a few games of touch football. They have to make training part of their lifestyle,” said Mr Morell.