On Saturday December 15th ten eager young lads along with the coaching/management Andrew Leonard and Kenny Carroll met at Dublin airport to travel to the La Manga club sport resort in South-Eastern Spain for a week of intense training in the sun.
The 10 boys travelling to La Manga were Adam Craig, James Smith, Conor O’Gorman, Mark Donegan, Danny Hogan, Eamonn Byrne, Fiachra Tucker, Max Byers, Aaron Bailey and David Murphy. The guys travelling were a mixture of players from U15 to U19 from different clubs right across Leinster.
We flew to Alicante airport and from there drove for just over an hour to La Manga Club where we arrived late on the Saturday night to be greeted by a dinner in the houses and a strict warning to go straight to bed from Lenny and Kenny! The accommodation was superb and we all shared our own en-suite rooms, I was sharing with Danny Hogan for the week and with Sky Sports in the rooms we got to watch India v England when we woke early in the morning.
Training started early on Sunday morning after breakfast. We started with a fitness test before an intense fielding circuit. Andrew and Kenny said that they were setting a high standard of fielding as Ireland has a growing reputation as a strong fielding side. After the fielding exercises we had a break for lunch.
After lunch we split into 2 groups, 1 group did batting drills in the nets with Kenny while the 2nd group were bowling on the mat with Andrew. He took videos of everyone bowling before the groups swapped over. Most of the batting and bowling we did was videoed and analysed by Andrew and Kenny and it was very helpful to be able to see our performances on camera.
Monday morning we were up early again for breakfast at 8am, as we would be every day, so that we could start training at 10 a.m. We did more fielding in the morning and did a lot of throwing exercises which we continued throughout the week to improve our throwing techniques.
After lunch we did nets and used two bowling machines. Every person got to bat at some stage and was filmed batting against the bowling machine. We finished the day by playing a football match on one of the eight football pitches that we could have used!
After each long day of training we went to the spa in La Manga where there was a nice indoor pool as well as a sauna and a steam room. There was also a cold pool outside our apartment block which we could go to if we wanted although that was a good bit colder!
On Tuesday we did a catching competition which was very testing and David Murphy won impressively catching the mixture of different types of catches. We did nets again in the afternoon along with some batting and bowling drills. Each evening we followed going to the pool by going for dinner as a group where we all enjoyed good banter with each other including quizzing Kenny about his duck against Muttiah Muralitheran in the World Cup!
On Wednesday we did another tough fielding circuit before we were taught about how to bat against spin. We talked about playing with the spin and where to hit the ball against different spinners. We finished training a bit earlier on Wednesday before taking a drive to the Mar Menor, which is the ‘World’s largest swimming pool’ for a team swim in the lagoon before an ice-cream treat and a walk to a huge lighthouse in Cabo de Palos which is the South-Eastern tip of Spain.
On Thursday we had the morning off as we were feeling the effects of four long days training and we played some mini golf, which turned into a mini-masters with everyone including the coaches getting very competitive! Then in the afternoon we had a double wicket competition where we batted in pairs on the main pitch and tried to score as many runs as possible in five overs, this was a great chance to put the skills we had learned in the prior days into effect in the middle and there was a very good standard of cricket on show in the middle.
On Friday we did another catching challenge and some more bowling. We then had a net challenge in the afternoon which saw an intense couple of hour’s competition. There were cones in the areas of the net you could score runs and you got 1 run if you hit it through the cones, or picked a gap and ran a quick single but you lost 5 runs if you got out or lost a run if you played and missed or the ball hit your pad. Aaron Bailey came out on top in this although Adam Craig came close as well.
We went to the beach again on Friday, this time in the resort to have a final swim in the Mediterranean, all this just days before Christmas! In the evening we had an early dinner on site before going to the nearby city of Cartagena in the cars and visited a large shopping centre as well as the town centre before spending some time playing pool, air hockey and other amusements at an arcade there.
Throughout the trip we ate dinner in some very nice restaurants including two restaurants in the Hotel de Felipe. We also ate in an Italian called Luigi’s. We ate breakfast every morning in the Deli café.
We left La Manga on Saturday late afternoon for Alicante airport after training in the morning. We were exhausted after the long week of training and arrived home tired at 11.30 p.m. The weather throughout the week was superb with not a drop of rain to be seen and the sunny 20 degrees providing the perfect platform to train in.
Overall it was a great trip and we learned a lot in the week and everyone improved greatly. Andrew and Kenny kept track of our performances over the week to measure our improvement.
At the end of the week, Aaron Bailey was chosen as player of the week for his all-around efforts and I was really chuffed to be chosen as most improved player. This training camp has set us up for next season and we can’t wait to start now.
Thanks to Andrew and Kenny for the high quality coaching and for making the training enjoyable and fun while pushing all of us to improve and be the best we can be.
Eamonn Byrne
Leinster CC