“Gone are the days where you use pre-season for gaining fitness it is about preparing for the first game.” … Those were the encouraging words of Brentford manager Dean Smith after early pre-season training with the players, and yet another example of how times have changed from pre-seasons of old when the players were reluctantly run around Richmond Park until they were sick.
Of course, we should no longer be surprised that, during the players’ short summer break, they haven’t been out on the lash 24/7, or been binging on Peri-Peri Chocolate Caramel Brownies at Nandos every night – to be playing at this level has taken a life-time’s dedication for almost ever single player in our squad, and an athlete’s mentality is the only way they can compete in one of the most demanding leagues in the world.
But it really does beggar belief how things used to be so different – back in the Seventies and Eighties players would often turn back up for duty in early July out of condition and over weight – and as you’ll see from a couple of these cuttings taken from the Big Brentford Book of the Eighties – some of the fitness regimes seem more Camp Boot than Camp Nou.
Brentford welcomed back the likes of Philipp Hofmann, Lewis Macleod, Scott Hogan, and Andreas Bjelland, players who were sidelined by injury for a lot of last season, a week ahead of the other players to give them a head start, with the trio of new signings hopefully slotting into the squad well ahead of the curtain raising friendly at Boreham Wood this Friday.
The match will no doubt give Brentford fans their first glimpse of one or two of the new signings and whet the appetite for the start of the 2016/17 season, which kicks off with an away game at Huddersfield on Saturday August 6th.
Dave Lane
@beesotted100
