2003 UK TOUR HIGHLIGHTS-REVIEW
Chelsea Vs PSA
23 players toured with the PSA this year along with coaches Jeff Haydon (Southend Manor, Canvey Is Boys, Real 60 FC) PSA, UK Academy scout/coach, Kieren Cooper (Rochedale Rovers) Brian Cheesman (JPC) Steve Murray, PSA Academy Director and Jayne Murray, Tour Manager.
FOR DETAILS ON ALL MATCHES PLAYED CHECK OUT
MATCH REPORTS PAGE
First stop Peterborough . As in previous years Peterborough United FC have hosted the first week of the tour welcoming our players to the club and allowing them access to all facility’s which saw the lads sharing the lunchtime dining room with the first team players which included the brother of Arsenal’s Chris Kanu . After settling into the Aaron Park Hotel which has now become our home from home, the players strolled into town and had lunch at the stadium with some of the reserve grade players, which included Shane Huke. Shane who toured with us the previous year has now signed a 3-year professional contract with the Posh. By 4.00pm on the first day of our tours it becomes a constant struggle to keep players from falling asleep due to jet lag, so a visit to a local sports shops usually dose the trick and then off to the hotel for an early night.
Day 2 the highlight of the morning was watching Soon Il Kwoon confidently telling his friend Terry that the salt dispenser contained sugar. I thought he was playing a practical joke on Terry and I said nothing until I caught Soon Il out of the corner of my eye putting salt on his Corn Flakes, at this point something had to be said!
Today would see the lads travel to Leicester City FC.
A light training session followed by lunch at the Posh stadium was enough to shake of some jet lag and refuel the lads in preparation for what was to be a very memorable 90 minutes against a quality Foxes Academy side that evening. SEE MATCH REPORT PAGE LEICESTER CITY 4-4 PSA
Day 3 .After a late breakfast, which allowed the players to rest their tired legs from the night before, the lads boarded the buses for Castor, Peterborough United training ground. Barry Fry (PUFC Manager) had asked if we could play a friendly against their reserves, as they had one player coming back from a broken leg and Curtis Woodhouse (Birmingham City ) trailing. This would allow Barry to take a look at Curtis, who has since signed for the club and give Ryan Semple a chance to play his first game since his broken leg. The match kicked of at 2.00pm. This was a great experience for all the PSA players who held out for 20 minutes before the Posh scored their first goal. The majority of our lads being only 15/16 years of age gained valuable experience against a team of full time professionals. It was great to see one or two of them win personal battles against some of these full time professionals, defender Daniel Alizart stood out for the PSA and showed great leadership and discipline. In the end the Posh where far to strong and experienced for us, but what a great and unexpected opportunity for our lads to compete at this level. Every player gave 100%. The day ended with an evening meal at the Posh stadium and a squad meeting followed by free time for the player who played pool in the club lounge bar SEE MATCH REPORT PAGE PETERBOROUGH UNITED FC (Reserves) 4-0 PSA
Day 4 after yet another great breakfast at the Aaron Park Hotel it was off to the local swimming pool for a recovery session in the pool. Today was all about rest and relaxation and what better way to do that on a Football tour than sit back and watch the professionals show you how it’s done. After the morning recovery session in the pool the lads had plenty of free time in the town center before meeting at the London Road stadium for the match between Peterborough United and Colchester United. The Posh media department called the PSA squad onto the field at half time for a squad photo, a nice touch that the players appreciated. The match itself was a disappointment as the Posh went down 2-1. Barry Fry the Posh manager who had granted us permission into the sponsors bar/restaurant at half time met us there after the match and organized a photo with the PSA squad and himself. Barry later joked that perhaps after seeing our display against the posh reserve that maybe we should have played Colcherster today. Most of the lads decided to walk back through town and grab a bite to eat along the way to the Hotel. As it was Saturday night, I had imposed a strict curfew, as in all major towns and city’s all over the world, Saturday night’s can be very unpredictable and no place for young touring footballers.
Barry Fry with Tour group 2003
Day 5
started with the minor disappointment that for the second year running Northampton Town canceled on us at the last minute. As always we have a back up plan so it was off to Castor the Posh training ground to have a training session on the all weather pitch. It is times like this that I am always thankful for the help of John ‘Gaffa’ Morling who when
we first met was the Academy director at the Posh and who was whilst we where on tour appointed joint first team coach. After training Jayne Murray (tour manager) organized for a small local pizza restaurant to open especially for us at short notice which was a real life saver as we where due to be in Northampton today and had not planed to be in Peterborough. These things all sound easy
to organise however you must understand that 23 players and 4 coaches all just turning up anywhere without a booking for Sunday lunch just ain’t going to happen and many frantic phone calls by Jayne paid of yet again. After lunch it was off to watch Gaffa’s girlfriend Jane playing football. What a surprise she got when she saw Gaffa stroll in with us lot in toe. The lads sang the girls to victory that afternoon and I think
the boys where surprised at one or to of the girls who showed some very good individual skills. Arsenal where playing Man Utd, live on TV so we headed back to Castor to watch the match on the big screen. On the way back to the Hotel we stopped off at the posh stadium so that the lads could play some pool and watch MTV.
Day 6
after breakfast it was off to training, this time indoor and 5 a side. This made a welcome change, the squad split up into 4 teams, it became very competitive. The final, which was unfortunately a one-sided affair, saw the coaches literally run out of steam. We became very disjointed with much infighting and a total loss of discipline (all in good fun). The players accused us of cheating. I
suppose Kieren may have done a bit of this and the fact that I tossed an opponent’s shoe into the gallery probably gave them some ammunition for a case against us. All in all a good workout for the lads and a great demonstration by us coaches of how to loose the plot. Back to the stadium to have lunch and then back to the hotel to relax before traveling to Cambridge City
for a night match. On our way to Cambridge the heavens opened up and we received a call that we where hoping not to get GAME CANCELED. Back to the hotel for some free time and the headache of re scheduling the match.
Day 7 the big day had finally arrived. Jeff Haydon had landed us the match up of all match up’s Chelsea , currently one of the wealthiest football clubs in the UKChelsea Academy coach Mark Beeny at Club Real 60. Mark, ex Leeds (Keeper) & now keeper coach for the academy was impressed with the set up PSA had with other UK clubs so introduced us to Chelsea.
Steve, Mark Beenie & Jeff
It’s funny how things pan out. Soon Il Kwon, one of the Korean lads went to sit down at the breakfast table this morning and his chair fell apart in his hand, everyone in the dining room cracked up laughing as the hapless Soon Il tried to fix it back together. Too his credits he got the chair back together and ate his breakfast. Later that evening he pops up at the near post and fire’s in our first goal against Chelsea, I bet he never figured on that happening earlier that morning. We headed off to London once the rush hour traffic had died down. We arrived at Chelsea’s training ground just in time to watch Claudio Ranieri put the players through their paces. It was great for the lads to see so many stars in one training session Veron, Crespo, Duff, Lampard just to name a few. Chelsea’s training ground is probably one of the worst in the premiership, that’s not to say the facility’s are poor just that many first and second division clubs that we have played over the last few years have much better facility’s. Don’t get me wrong it is not my intention to be disrespectful, I must point out that someone at the club must have noticed it too as news had slipped out that they had just shelled out 22 million pounds on a new facility in Cobham. As far as we where concerned I am sure the lads would have played them in the car park of the local supermarket. Our players seemed noticeably subdued in the dressing room and I remember thinking that this game could go horribly wrong for us if we show them too much respect. I set the side out in our customary 442, 3 center backs and a sweeper, 4 in midfield and 2 up front. With such a large squad it was important to get the initial balance correct so that when we made the large number of changes we would still have a reasonable balance to the team. SEE MATCH REPORT PAGE. CHELSEA 2-2 PSA .
I don’t remember what I said to the players before the kick off but I know it would have been something like. “ You are all part of a quality squad of players and I would not have brought you here unless I felt confident that you would give a good account of yourselves. You deserve to be here, go out and enjoy the experience and stick to the way we normally play, we can’t change just because we are playing Chelsea, lets see if they can deal with us”. 2–0 up at half time and a final score of 2-2 was a fantastic result for us as Chelsea had 3 junior international players in the side. The thing that pleased me most about the match was one of our lads David Reesby who is normally a central midfielder and not particularly tall. I asked David to sit in as a center back and then moved him to right back as changes where made, I will never forget the look on his face you would have thought that I had asked him to play bare foot. I explained that to get everyone on the park we would need to play one or two players out of position, needless to say he said ok and just got on with the job. I could see he was not comfortable but his concentration and professional attitude got him through it.
David Reesby
David was switched into the midfield later in the game. It is worth noting that we never conceded a goal whilst he was at the back. I would like to thank David for trusting me and believing in the trust I had in him. The players looked very disappointed that they didn’t beat Chelsea which frustrated the hell out of me so much so that I called a special team meeting at the Posh stadium the following day to discuss the issue. If we hadn’t made so many changes I am positive we would have beat Chelsea. I would never change my decision to give all the (fit) players reasonable time on the pitch especially against the likes of Chelsea, believe me nobody wants to win matches more than ME!
Dan & "Verons" Hummer
Day 8
after breakfast it was off to Castor for a light training session with Gaffa and Kevin Flinn the former Posh under 17 coach. I have been lucky enough to watch many of Kevin’s sessions over the past few years and I really appreciate Kevin going out of his way to put on this session with Gaffa. As the Posh Academy has now been scraped due to financial
constraints Kevin is no longer coaching at the club yet he still came and put a session on for us. The session was light hearted as the players had played Chelsea the night before yet many good coaching points still came across. Lunch, for the last time on the tour was at the stadium. At this point I must give a special mention to Ray, who is the stadium catering and functions boss. Over
the years Ray has gone the extra mile for us time and again, the players have no idea how important people like Ray are to the overall tour, however Jayne and I do. THANKS RAY!
That evening Keiren took some of the lads to the local snooker hall. I didn’t here of any reports of players being hustled out of money by Kieren however that doesn’t mean he didn’t try.
Day 9 an early breakfast and then load the busses up for our move to the County Hotel Ipswich. The County hotel is a very nice hotel however leaving Rhona and Dean’s great little family run B&B which has a great family feel to it, especially as we take over all the rooms and have the place to ourselves is not easy. We say our good-byes and get on the road to Ipswich. We arrived at Ipswich Town where Malcolm Moore (Academy recruitment officer) had arranged for us to use the indoor dome with its special synthetic pitch for a training session at 2.30pm. So of we went to have lunch in the town center which Jayne had arranged, it was one of the Korean lads birthdays, Jayne presented him with a cake and I arranged for everyone to sign a Football which we presented him with. With all of that out of the way it was back to the training ground for our indoor session. For people how don’t know Ipswich Town FC have one of the best training facility’s in England many of the pitches are better than some of the pitches at stadiums in the Premier league.
Malcolm and Brian Kluge have always made us very welcome and it must be said that I have always felt that Ipswich Towns Academy teams have always impressed me more than any other club I have visited and that includes many Premier League Academy’s. My old mate Geoff Pike was working at the
club on the same day and it was nice of him to hang around and chat with us for a while before he headed of home. The lads enjoyed playing on the indoor surface which is where the first team train when it is to wet outside. Next it was off to check into the County Hotel. Later that evening we headed into town and had our evening meal in a restaurant then back to the hotel where some of the players relaxed in the spa or watched
TV.
Day 10
, with breakfast out of the way it was of to the local park for a very light training session as we where off to play Ipswich that evening all of the academy grounds where out of action today so we had to improvise. Lunch was back at the Ipswich Towns training ground and then it was of with Malcolm who as always takes the time to show the lads around the stadium and facility’s. It was now
time to head back to the hotel and get ready for tonight’s game. I doubt if many of the lads will ever play on such a perfect surface as this again. Our previous 2 games against Town had been very close with us loosing 2-1 and 3-2, so I felt reasonably confidant that we would do well.
SEE MATCH REPORT PAGE IPSWICH TOWN 2-0 PSA.
We had our chances and never took them; it was as simple as that. I changed our formation and played with 3 up front which is a very bold move against a top academy side. To be honest we created some great chances and should have scored 2 or 3 goals. To be perfectly honest I feel that I made a tactical mistake as we only had 3 defenders in a 3 4 3 formation. Ipswich
Towns academy side where sharper than us on the day and took there chances enough said! All in all a great day.
Day 11 the lads where given an extra hour to sleep in but once breakfast was out of the way it was off to Leicester to watch Manchester United Vs Leicester City . We had cut it a bit fine with regards to the time we arrived in Leicester. Not really knowing my way around the town I wanted to park the busses as close as I could to the ground. I was aware this would be a real gamble trying to park 2 busses anywhere near a Premier League ground 30 minutes from kick off on a match day. As we darted down one street after another desperately looking for somewhere to park we inadvertently turned straight into a large crowd of Man Utd supporters being escorted by police cars, vans, police on horseback, on foot and by helicopter. There we where stuck sitting behind this with 20 minutes to kick off, GREAT!!! In desperation, I turned left into a side stet and saw an off duty fireman walking out of a fire station. I asked him if we could park at the side of the building, he went in and asked his boss who said we could park around the back with the fire engines, what a life saver, thanks to him we got into the ground on time. A great match for the lads to see. 4-1 to Man Utd, and for once Van Nistelrooy managed to stay on his feet (dive dive dive) and bag a hat-trick, it was great for the lads to see all the movement off the ball Particularly from the big guy up front. On the way back to the hotel our bus was turned into a battlefield. The boys had stolen Kierens lighter, armed only with a copy of Beckham’s biography, Kieren managed to beat the hell out of one or two players (all in good fun) but he didn’t get his lighter back. We grabed a bite to eat on the road and headed back to the hotel where some of the boys took to the spa again.
Day 12 at the breakfast table all the talk was of yesterday’s match. Our match with Cambridge City had been re scheduled for this afternoon. So it was off to Cambridge. Cambridge City has one of the best academies outside the professional leagues and we have always had close games against them and that was to prove the case again. 1-1 with 4 minutes to go and a lapse in concentration from an individual cost us a draw. SEE MATCH REPORTS. That’s the way it goes. City’s team was a year or two older than our boys and we rode our luck at time’s in this game but I feel we got a lot out of it as was to be proved in our last two matches. We stopped off for food on the way back to the hotel. We had 2 games left to play Jeff Haydon and I honestly felt we where close to a win, which would be a nice way to end the tour. All the way through Jeff and I had worked together with regards to setting out the team. Brian and Kieren’s input on team line-ups was always appreciated and given consideration. With such a large squad it was great to have 3 other coaches who understand young players and it helped us particularly towards the end of the tour as we slipped into a higher gear.
Day 13 an early breakfast and we checked out of the County Hotel and headed to Basildon for the last 3 days of the tour. Unfortunately the hotel was disappointing but with only 3 days to go and a pretty full schedule to get through we wouldn’t be spending much time there anyway. Once we checked in it was off to Colchester to play Colchester United . It was good to see their first team manager show up to watch the game which turned out to be a very exiting match, 3-1 up and let our lead slip and the game ended up COLCHESTER UTD 3-3 PSA SEE MATCH REPORTS We played some very good attacking football in the game and it was looking very promising for our last match against Wycombe Wanderers set for tomorrow afternoon. I felt very confident that we could beat Wanderers as they had taken a 1-1 draw with Colchester United in a league fixture only one week previously. No disrespect to United but we where by far the better team on the day and a similar performance would give us a good chance. Geoff Pike and his wife Pauline came to watch us play and it was great to see them both again. After some food in the clubhouse it was off to the hotel. We ate out in Basildon that night and returned back to the hotel to recharge our batteries for the next day.
Day 14 Geoff Pike had arranged the game against Wycombe Wanderers for us as he had been doing some work at the club that week with a coach who was finishing his UEFA’A’ License. We had lunch on the way and reached Wycombe by late afternoon. Unbelievably a young lad from Brisbane Adam Ried was to play against us today. Adam had been trailing that week at Wanderers and it was great to see him over there giving it a go. After a shaky first half we ran riot over our opposition and ran out worthy winners in what turned out to be a very competitive match WYCOMBE WANDERES 2-5 PSA SEE MATCH REPORTS PAGE.
One of the Korean lads got a hat trick and a stunning free kick by Jordan was capped off by a great individual goal from Gus . However every squad member played a part in our first ever win over a professional academy. We had previously beaten Ipswich Wanderers at Ipswich Towns training ground a couple of years ago but never a pro academy. I must stress that the tours are not about winning or losing it is the overall experience that is so very important. Giving a good account of ourselves and earning respect from professional academies. This was certainly the case again this year, as the feedback that I have received from the likes of Chelsea, Colchesrter Utd, The Posh, Ipswich Town and Wycombe Wanderers will verify.
Day 15 OFF TO LONDON SIGHTSEEING . What better way to finish off than a day out in London, My hometown? We crammed in as much as we could and the lads got to see all the usual tourist sights Buck House, Big Ben etc, followed by a trip on the London Eye, the Giant Ferris wheel on the banks of the River at Westminster Bridge. We finished off with a cruise down the River past St Paul’s Cathedral, Shakespeare Globe Theater disembarking at the Tower of London. We took the train back to Basildon and then Jeff decided it would be a good idea to go and see West Ham Vs Crystal Palace at Upton Park so we gathered up all the players who where interested and set of to the ground. West Ham won 3-0 Palace where a joke, Jeff and I wasted no time rubbing this into Brian who for his sins is a palace fan; otherwise he’s a nice bloke.
Day 16 5.30am forget about breakfast, we needed to get a head start on the rush hour traffic, off to the airport. Kieran and Brian went back to Brisbane with the players Jeff went back to Basildon to his wife and kids. Jayne, Jake (my son) and I headed off to New York for a much needed break.
OVERALL SUMMARY
This year’s tour was in many ways a totally different experience for me. Our Itinerary changed more times than I care to mention, half the squad was Korean, and 2 extra coaches. A different location and hotel on the last 3 days certainly tested my patience with the hotel management but overall I enjoyed the tour and the feed back from the players has been very positive. Kieren's idea to issue everyone with a single playing card, which had to be shown on his request, caused random outbreaks of anarchy as early as Brunei airport, BEFORE we arrived in London. However the fines paid by us all helped keep the cost of the London sightseeing down, and it was a great idea. Brian kept a record of all the players game time and made notes for the match reports, he also drove one of the busses, he never once got lost whilst following my lead bus which doesn’t sound that spectacular however on previous tours this has been a major nightmare for us. Brian's input and professionalism was greatly appreciated.
Jeff Haydon. What can I say about Jeff that doesn’t need editing? I have known Jeff for a number of years and can honestly say that I have the highest respect for his judgment of players and his coaching ability. Jeff has made great sacrifices on behalf of young players and for the game in general and has received great support and understanding from his wife and family. On a more personal note I would like to thank my wife Jayne, she has supported me 100% in everything I have ever undertaken, without her involvement and calming influence the PSA tours simply would not happen.
Steve Murray
Premier Soccer Academy, Director