COUGARS FIRST TEAM COACH GARY MOORBY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

1. Pre- Season training is obviously now well underway , how are your sessions planned and is the emphasis more on fitness and conditioning than gameplans/ ballhandling etc ?

1.

Pre - season training has gone extremely well so far we began on Nov 9th , this season we have redesigned our training, Paul Royston and I felt that we needed to "sharpen up " the players physically and mentally. Paul wanted to have more involvement with the overall conditioning of the squad, not just the weight training side of things. He designed various speed / agility / reaction based circuits and the players always worked with the ball in their hands from the onset. Usually the players do not see much of the ball in early pre-season as the main focus has always been on strength and fitness, this has still been the priority however the players have used the ball as well, the idea being that they feel comfortable with the ball in hand whilst working under pressure. Running along side this has been a the work they have had to do in the gym, again Paul has done things a little differently this time. The players have reacted very well to the systems he has put in place, the Cougar Park gym has not been a place for the faint hearted over the last couple of months, the competition between the lads has been tremendous.

Royboy's "baby" is the rowing machine, "the rower does not lie" is his favourite saying and the players are given targets to reach, to give you an idea, one target is to row as many metres as you can in 1 minute, Jordan Ross is the undisputed rowing king with 382 metres, try it and you will realise the fitness levels that we are achieving. Besides work at the club the players have been doing 2 runs a week and a weekend gym session in their own time. Over the last few sessions we have been looking at playing structures starting with defence, we will be building on things as we progress towards the start of the NR Cup

2

The squad is shaping up very well, we have 27 signed on players training plus 3 trialists that we are looking at. I am very pleased with the numbers because it has created the "buzz" in training that having such numbers creates. Last year we struggled to create the competitive environment due to the lack of numbers. There are one or two area's I would like more competition in, and we have tried to sign certain players in order to address that, however we were turned down. I would say that generally I am happy with the squad as it is, however should the opportunity arise to bring player to the club that could make us stronger, we would obviously be interested.

2.Following the new signings are you happy now with the overall squad or do you still see areas where we need to strengthen ?

3.There was much debate from the supporters at the beginning of last season about the decision not to play any pre -season friendlies,in view of the two Rochdale games this year have your views on playing friendlies altered and do you believe they have a place in pre season preparation ?

The main reason for deciding not play any friendlies last year was down to the lack of numbers, in 2003 we had a 26 man squad, last year we had a 21 man squad, that included Stuart Calvert and James Rushforth who both had injury problems, which basically took us down to 19, any further injuries would have obviously created more problems from the onset.

4. Rochdale began the season with a law Cup victory against Oldham and will provide tough opposition ,how do you plan to approach the games ?Will we be looking at seeing the potential starting 13 take the field or do you plan to give some of the younger and less experienced squad members a run out ?

As I have previously stated, pre-season has been very good and the lads are getting very eager to get back to playing, we are aware of Rochdale's performance against Oldham, as we had them watched. We will defiantly be looking for a good performance in both fixtures, we will be using the games basically as trial games, we will be giving all of the squad the chance to impress and stake their claim for a first team jersey against Hull K R in the NR cup

5.The Northern Rail Cup has provided us a tough qualifying group,with out being too pessimistic , realistically do you see us having any chance of reaching the next stage of the completion ?

We will be looking to progress as far as we can in the NR Cup, a good cup run would be the ideal way to prepare for the season ahead, as far as I see it, this is the start of a new season and sides will be using the cup to give their squads plenty of game time, whilst looking at what their best combinations are and we will be no different . Yes the group will be a tough one but we wont be worrying about other teams , we will be concentrating on what we are looking to do.

CHEERS GARY