Mark Robinson was delighted to welcome back Shane McLoughlin for his first training session since his appointment as Head Coach.
After suffering a knee injury, McLoughlin would have missed the Rochdale game if it had gone ahead, but he’s back in contention for the trip to League One promotion contenders Peterborough on Saturday.
“It was Shane’s first training session back today, which was great news,” said Robbo. “I was also hoping Ollie would be back too, but he will possibly be back tomorrow.”
Though Mark is disappointed that Callum Reilly will miss out on Saturday’s match due to a hamstring injury, he really appreciated the player’s honesty.
“Callum has got a slight tweak, which is a real shame because I felt that he did very well against Wigan, but I was so pleased that he was honest. The lads know the intensity we want to play at and Callum was gutted to rule himself out, but he came to me and said, ‘I know where you want to go with this, I don’t think I can give you everything’. That is all you want, you want that honesty. I trust them because they are not going to pull themselves out of football matches, but at the same time I want them to recognise that with the levels of intensity we want you cannot do it if someone is 70 or 80 per cent.”
In his update after training at Plough Lane today, Robbo added that Shayon Harrison is in contention to make his debut after impressing in training sessions since he joined us.
Our newly appointed Head Coach had a spring in his step today after putting the players through their paces at our spiritual home, but he’s fully focused on the tough task in hand at Peterborough – and getting his ideas across to the squad.
“We’ve had training sessions here before, but I’m doing it in a different capacity now. If feels really special and I’ve enjoyed it. Although it was really emotional yesterday, I had to put that to one side as we have a job to do and it was a really good session today.
“All I am asking the lads to do is to go there and be on the front foot and let’s keep building our identity. What was so nice today was that there was so much interaction with the players. Woody stopped the session at one point and said, ‘what if they do this?’ Joe also stopped it at set pieces. That’s what you need because they are the ones that play the game. You need that interaction because clarity leads to performance. If everyone is going out there clear about what they are doing then that’s another stepping stone in terms of where we want to get to.
“This is our only free week. After this we play Saturday, Tuesday for the next five or six weeks, so our time on the grass is going to be very limited. This week was key in terms of trying to take it up another level. You are never going to go through everything in a week, but this is why it’s so important that we attack everything on the front foot. If you don’t, you have nowhere to go. If we are safe and we don’t try to implement these things that the lads want to implement you just come back and you have nowhere to go. If you attack it and you are positive, you can always look at it and say, ‘we did that really well, but this needs to be better'. That is how we will grow."
Our cameras were at Plough Lane today for Robbo's first day since his appointment as Head Coach. Click on the link below for training footage, plus Rob Cornell's interview with Robbo.