Sam Ricketts confirms dates for pre-season trip to Portugal
Sam Ricketts briefed the media yesterday to inform them about the clubs pre-season plans which includes a seven-day training trip to Portugal.
Sam spoke to Shrewsweb and explained his thinking as to why he felt a trip like this would be beneficial for the squad.
"We've been planning the six week period of pre-season and part of that will involve a week in Portugal," said Sam. "It will be the week of the 7th July to the 14th.
"We've tried to push it back a bit further than usual which means we'll hopefully have the vast majority of the squad assembled by then.
"Going away will be a good training exercise. Seven days of warm climate training but also getting the players together and living on top of each other as much as anything to try and build relationships between the players.
"We can obviously train here every day in Shrewsbury which we will be doing anyway but the difference here is when the players are finished they go their separate ways. Whereas in Portugal they'll be going back to the hotel rooms and sharing with teammates and talking about the session, TV, games or family, whatever it is that helps build connections between players.
"You're bringing strangers together and you want to try and unify them together as quickly as you can.
"We'll be training every day but within that, we'll try some different exercises and galvanise that team spirit. There are many different ways of doing it but we'll do that in the days we're there but also when we're back home as well."
Sam also confirmed that the team will be playing a practice game whilst they are out there however a team is yet to be finalised.
"We'll have a game of some sort. It's not going to be a stereotypical pre-season match where it's 90 minutes. It will probably be more like a training ground game. It could be in 15-minute blocks, it could be shorter or it could be longer it depends on how many players we use as you're gaging players fitness.
"It will be a very relaxed informal game against whoever it is."
A practice game is pencilled in which the club hope to release the details of shortly.