Admittedly, our first day out here has been a long one for all of the staff and the players who have made the trip from Derby.
We were scheduled to report at the Training Centre for 2:30am ready for a 3am departure for Manchester Airport and with those times, a lot of the players and staff varied in how they built up to such an awkward hour.
I travelled down from Hartlepool at 11:30pm and arrived at the Training Centre for 2am and it’s safe to say that the day caught up and taking its toll on myself and the rest of the boys towards the end.
Despite how long a day it has been, this tour is something that the group have really been looking forward to. The players only knew that they were flying out a week before so it has been an exciting build up amongst the lads.
From arriving at Alicante, where we met Ivan Calero who had already flown out to spend some time with his family beforehand, we boarded a coach which took us to the Oliva Nova Resort, which is based in Valencia, and I think it’s fair to say that the place and its facilities immediately impressed us.
Darren Wassall and Pat Lyons scheduled a late training session for us at the resort and after having lunch shortly after our arrival it gave all the boys a good chance to catch up on some much needed sleep, whilst some took the opportunity to make the short walk across the resort and on to the beach.
For me personally, this is the first time that I have been on a tour such as this. It is already proving to be far different from pre-season tours where the emphasis in solely on building match fitness ahead of a new season.
This is more of a tactical exercise, whilst it’s also great to experience different surroundings, culture and, importantly, spend some quality time together as a group.
We are with each other 24/7, we are all sharing rooms and that can only be good for the team spirit amongst the group.
Our main priority, however, is to work. No question. We have a really exciting game against Valencia’s B side to look forward to on Wednesday afternoon and we are all gearing up to make sure we are ready for that.
Although it is a friendly, it’s going to be a big test for us. In all likelihood we will be coming up against older players, more experienced players, different tactics, a different style of play and the game represents an exciting proposition for all of us.
All refreshed (slightly) after a few hours down time, we completed our first piece of preparation for the game in two days’ time.
We made our way to one of the resorts pitches and spent just over an hour working on various bits and pieces.
One of those practises was, of course, shooting and myself and Devlin Mackay were put through our paces at the end of the session.
Despite it being such a long day some of the boys were on fire. There was a healthy competition amongst the group and we are looking to take our recent league form into the game.
We have made a strong start to the season and we just want to carry that on. Wednesday will give us a great opportunity to see how far we have progressed from the side that we were last year.
This tour is going to be a great experience for the whole group and I’m looking forward to see how it unfolds.
Keep fully up to date with Derby County’s Under 21s four-day tour of Spain across the club’s official Twitter account @dcfcofficial, whilst more reaction will follow only on dcfc.co.uk.
