Potts of benefits

Five star treatment in Cyprus goes down well with the Pars U20s squad

WEB ALBUM OF TOUR
The hotel, the weather, the food, the facilities - just "different class" summed up the trip to Cyprus for the Dunfermline Athletic U20s, John Potter told the website on his return.

"The boys were great, there was no hassle and it was great over there for us and me as a coach. You could get a good session with them every day, there were things that I wanted to do and they hadn't trained on grass for six weeks. Out there it was every day and twice a day.

"The hotel was a five star hotel. When we arrived there was no one there except CSKA Moscow. We had the run of the place for the first four or five days. The training pitch was a one minute walk away; there was a great pitch there and that was ours two times a day with the gym and the pool. Later on in the week another four or five teams arrived. There was a Polish team, a Bulgarian team and three Russian teams."

John trained the boys from 9.00 until 11.30 in the morning; we'd come back and use the gym and the pool. Have lunch and if there was some other teams training we would go out and watch them.

"We watched Legia Warsaw, Levski Sofia, Ruben Khazan and although quite a lot of that was fitness training we managed to follow what they were doing. Those were men's teams which was slightly different from us. When they trained under the lights at night they were just flying."

Dunfermline took on CSKA U21s in Cyprus. John explained how he had three coaches and a limited number in his squad whilst CSKA Moscow had 25 players and 12 staff.

"They were all big 6'5" Russians and we could see our boys gaze at them but when we went to play them we were excellent. Coaches came from other teams to watch. Blair Henderson scored the only goal of the game from a corner.  We were delighted to win the game and after that it built respect up for the young Scots and everybody wanted to speak to us.. 

"Two days later we  played a Russian first team from the Second Division. They were men and had 22 players so two different elevens; it was 0-0 with two minutes to go but they scored two late goals.  It was the warmest day, we struggled a bit in the heat but still played really well. We should have been two or three goals up. We had both games videoed by the opposition and gave us DVDs."

 John commended the work put in by his boys in Cyprus and they deservedly got some beach time. He did not have any beans to spill on any antics although the youngest tourists Lewis Spence and Finn Graham were reputedly at the centre of most things:-

"Everyone loved them one minute and hated them the next. They were quite annoying and up to their usual stuff but the coaches kept well out of that. There was no hassle; everyone in the hotel loved them and the staff appreciated them being chatty."

The facilities included tennis and squash courts, there were pool tables, swimming pool and gym. The beach was just across the road but the place around was all shut up, there were hardly any shops and no nightclub. There was a cafe with all the British football to watch.

Early morning run

The CSKA physio helped with small niggly injuries to Grant Munro and Lewis Spence but all the squad trained on the last few days in Cyprus.  Now it remains to be seen how the U20s can do when they meet Falkirk on Tuesday 29th January at the Forthbank Stirling (kick off 7.00pm), then its Dundee, Celtic, Ross County all at home before the Scottish Youth Cup tie on Sunday 24th February against Inverness Caley Thistle.
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