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Serious training unfolds
By: David Owusu-Mensah
What could have been a tight schedule for Asante Kotoko during last week was rather turned into a week of less activity in terms of open play despite serious work outs at the team’s training grounds.
Kotoko was billed to play Real Tamale United in an outstanding league match of the 16th week fixture in the ongoing Onetouch Premier League on May Day but the expected encounter was called off due to flight problems that the team had to encounter after the CAF Confederations Cup tie with Dolphins in Nigeria.
Instead of the team arriving on the late afternoon of last week Monday and prepare intensively ahead of the said match on Thursday, the fabulous contingent were faced with the problem of flight connection from Calabar to Lagos in Nigeria, and therefore had to land safely in Ghana on Tuesday.
The Professional League Board therefore decided to have the match rescheduled upon management’s request.
With the RTU encounter rescheduled, the Reds focused their attention on Berekum Arsenal for the match that was originally slated for Sunday after frustration from Malian Referee, Karembe Osmane had woefully exposed them to a 0-2 defeat in Nigeria, the clash with the team from Berekum was called off once again, leaving players and technical staff of the team with little to do in terms of serious action on the field.
The reason being clear and quite understandable that, the Porcupine Warriors have more than three players in the camp of the local Black Stars who were scheduled to host their Togolese counterparts last Sunday (they eventually won 2-0) and could not honour the match with the gunners from Berekum.
Initially, the team was reported to have engaged in light training and body work outs in distant, Calabar when it became imminent that, they could not make it to Lagos and subsequently to Ghana as planned on Monday.
The exercises continued later on Wednesday after the team had arrived on Tuesday, and the regimen further gave them another opportunity of a full-scale recovery training session to point out mistakes and correct rough edges of the team.
To further ensure they never rest on their oars, the players were once again assembled to their training duties both on Thursday and Friday where they were made to touch the ball, do ball control and ball work on the field.
These two successive training sessions saw the players grouped in two teams to engage each other in a training match to assess how best the players would fare when offered the chance to feature for Kotoko in competitive matches.
The local Black Stars contingent in Kotoko did not train with the team but moved to camp earlier on Tuesday in response to the national call. They were due to join their colleagues yesterday.
Almost all the registered players were present during the sessions with the exception of few others of which notable among them is Baba Armando who reported to the grounds some three weeks back but has not showed up afterwards.
Since there was not much to do over the weekend, the technical staff headed by Coach Bashir Hayford wanted the players’ stamina to be in perfect condition as always and therefore made them to train from 8:00 am – 10:15 am on Saturday which is quite unusual.
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