A look at the work our stoppers do
Over a period of four weeks, come rain or shine, University of Cumbria journalism students Harry Barker and Tom Dorsett took to the Brunton Park training pitches to bring you an insider’s look into Tony Caig’s training sessions with his group of goalkeepers.
In the video feature you’ll see everything from ‘keeper wars’ to interviews with Tony Caig as well as first-choice keepers Adam Collin and Mark Gillespie. There is also an insight interview with young goalkeepers Jordan Parker and Lewis Brass as they give us their point of view from an U18 perspective.
A stand-out angle from the feature was how much respect the coach has among the keepers, and of their enjoyment of working with him.
“He’s got my fitness levels right up and he’s got me doing things I thought I could never do,” first-year YTS stopper Lewis Brass said. “I can feel in myself that I’m learning all the time and my confidence has gone right up because of that.”
“The work we do keeps us sharp,” Adam Collin told us. “He makes sure he varies the training so that we cover everything and I think we all appreciate that.
“He’s been there and done it himself so if any of us have made a mistake, or if we’re going through a sticky patch, we know he can relate to it. He helps us out a lot with the technical stuff, and on the mental side, so he’s quite important for us.”
“Our sessions are all planned around the games because they come thick and fast,” Caig explained. “If we’ve seen something we think we should work on from what has gone on before then we do that, and we also look at where we think the threat will come from with our next opponents. We’ll know how they like to do their set pieces and things like that, and we’ll work the keepers accordingly.”
United Player subscribers can see the full video feature now. Click HERE to go to the United Player platform. Follow the same link for more information on United Player, and to subscribe.