A Welsh flag flies high outside Park Hall Stadium in Oswestry, Shropshire. As The New Saints players file downstairs into the gym from an opposition analysis meeting, they head past a giant whiteboard with another reminder, in block capitals and green marker pen, of the historic step that awaits.
"Fiorentina away, 8pm," reads the Thursday calendar entry.
The schedule also details their 9am flight to Florence, training at Stadio Artemio Franchi exactly 24 hours before their Conference League opener, rare rest and recovery windows, and coming back down to earth with a Cymru Premier trip to Briton Ferry, a few miles from the blast furnaces of Port Talbot, on Sunday. Later that day, Fiorentina will host Milan.
As Dan Leach, TNS strength and conditioning coach, logs data from urine samples in polystyrene cups to determine hydration levels, the overhead screeching of chairs being pulled into position is confirmation of the 10am squad meeting. Last Friday, TNS won 6-1 at Newtown in mid-Wales, in front of a crowd of 493, after successive league defeats for the first time in five years had left them reeling. Since then all footage has focused on Fiorentina, runners-up in the Conference League for the past two years.
Craig Harrison, the TNS manager, attended Fiorentina's Serie A win over Lazio last month but says anyone ribbing him about bagging a weekend in Florence on the basis of a work mission is forgetting his flying phobia. "I'm making sure I'm getting Greece and Slovenia, so every cloud," says the assistant manager, Chris Seargeant, alluding to December's matches against Panathinaikos and Celje.
Seargeant has already been to Dublin to watch Shamrock Rovers.
"You prefer Guinness anyway, don't you?" says a laughing Phil Davies, who doubles up as head of medical and kit man but whose title, really, knows no bounds. "If something needs doing, I'll do it," Davies says.
この記事は The Guardian の October 03, 2024 版に掲載されています。
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