United’s game on Tuesday night served not only as a good opportunity to get more valuable pitch time, but it also gave manager Chris Beech the chance to firm up his Friday training plans, with the Blues set to use Villa’s excellent training facility once again as they head south to face Crawley.
“I’m very passionate on a Saturday but the other day I was on my best behaviour because my mate Dean is Aston Villa’s manager, and I asked every member of staff before the game to be the same,” the gaffer explained.
“I’d whatsapped Dean Smith the other day, and he hadn’t double ticked me, so I told everybody to make sure they asked their manager after full time if we could train there on Friday on the way down to Crawley.
“Thankfully I got the old thumbs up from Dean and that’s great, because we can now go to Villa and we can train on one of their grass pitches, which is great.”
“It’s a little bit difficult because we don’t go into the buildings, we just get off the coach and train, and we make sure we’ve got the legs going,” he continued. “At the moment training is hard here in Carlisle. Our main pitch is tremendous, but the training pitch is really heavy now.
“A lot of the good things we’re doing have come from us having worked hard in training. It’s where we develop our players or get our team ready for a game.
“It’s even more difficult because some of the other places we can use to train when ours is struggling are all closed down, the likes of Penrith Rugby Club and Harraby.
“We’ve been put on our back foot, so to be able to train at Villa on a training pitch that’s as good as our first team pitch is tremendous. I’m looking forward to it so much I might just put my boots on as well!”
