From brutal running regimes to no mentions of last season, Melbourne City’s defence of the Premiers Plate was planned in minute detail, reports Tom Smithies.
There’s not a lot to distract you at Casey Fields, the new and expanding home base of Melbourne City.
The only minor excitement is the building work to create a new facilities block for the team; otherwise, it’s really rather quiet as the players move from the temporary gym housed in a shipping container to the immaculate nearby pitches with only their work to occupy them.
This was where the City players reported for the first day of pre-season in July, returning to work as champions but knowing the pain that was likely to be ahead. Almost immediately the infamous six-minute runs began, the measure of aerobic endurance capacity that sets the baseline for each player’s fitness.
Once the results were compared with those from last year – at the start of what had been described by several players during that campaign as the pre-season from hell – almost every player had matched or, in most cases, bettered their figures from 12 months earlier.
This was the first tangible sign that last year’s champions were serious about going back to back, and that the habitual curse of success – how hard it is to sustain – might not afflict Patrick Kisnorbo’s side.
Not that there was much to feel happy about for a squad being prepared for a schedule that even before the ravages of COVID was going to test their stamina thanks to the AFC Champions League. Full football training sessions in the morning were followed by drills to boost their endurance; 1km runs in every increasing numbers, separated only by 1.5min recoveries, climbing every day until the players could manage to reel off nine in a row.
“The immediate focus was essentially trying to move on from what happened last year as quickly as possible, because you’ve seen it so many times all over the world, teams do have a hangover (the next season),” recalls captain Scott Jamieson with what looks uncannily like a slight shudder at the memory of pre-season.
“I’d say it was equally as tough as last year. But I think the drive from firstly the players, but also the drive from the staff, to want to get better every day is embedded in us as a club now.
“You come back to pre-season and things like that give you a key indicator of where people are at mentally and if there’s a an overwhelming (desire for) improvement in the squad.”
The consistent message from the coaching staff was entirely about looking forward. There would be no comparisons to last season, let alone any indulgent reminiscing.
“There was never a case of ‘What we did last year was great’,” says Jamieson. “That is something that is key to players, because if you hear a message of, ‘We did this last year’, you kind of fall into a trap of, ‘Well, what we did last year was good enough, so we do it again this year’.
“But every year, you’ve got to improve. It’s just clear. So the message was always that it needs to be better, individually, and as a team.
“For (Kisnorbo) and the staff too, they also saw it as an opportunity to not rest on their laurels. There was a bit of change up in staff but there was always an emphasis of working harder than they did last year because the rest were chasing.”
***
Football dressing rooms can be delicately balanced ecosystems, where the arrival – or departure – of even one significant figure can change the dynamic.
City had re-signed most of the title-winning squad but the exit of Craig Noone removed the player with the second-highest number of appearances and second-highest number of goals. Jamieson could see there were less quantitative influences that would leave with Noone too – which made the signing of Socceroos striker Mathew Leckie all the more important.
“With ‘Nooney’, everyone knows how good he was on the pitch but we’re talking about an absolute champion off the pitch,” he said. “He played in the Premier League, scored against Man City, but is one of the hardest working players we had in the dressing room and one of the most humble considering his CV.
“So losing such a massive person like that was always going be hard. That’s why bringing someone of Mathew’s standing within Australian football softened that blow – you’re bringing in a guy who’s captaining Australia.
“From day one, he was brilliant with the group. He’s a quiet guy at the best of times. But he bought into really what had to happen here. I think he got here and understood the demands were pretty high. I think he was impressed with the daily standards of what had been set. It’s only natural, coming from the Bundesliga, maybe you think certain things are a little bit on a lesser scale when you come back to Australia. But he was pleasantly surprised, I think.”
Despite an uncertain start, with two wins in the first seven games, City had by the end of the regular season produced an almost identical return to last year, enough to win the Premiers Plate again. Making that even more impressive was the need to jam in six AFC Champions Leagues games in a short window in April overseas.
“In pre-season we sat down and looked at our schedule, we were told this is what it’s going to look like, you’ll have three games a week, you’re going to have the toughest schedule going around,” Jamieson recalls.
“That only doubled because of what COVID did to everybody. Then you throw in FIFA dates and losing players in key matches.
“But it just seemed to us that we had a belief that whatever challenge was getting presented, we had to adapt. It was never talked about, it was always just believed, you know, we’ll be able to adapt, and we’ll get through it.
“I never wavered, even getting battered by Melbourne Victory, I never wavered from the fact that we would still have a great opportunity to win the Premiership and then hopefully the league.”
Adelaide United v Melbourne City
Wednesday, May 18 2022
Coopers Stadium
Kick-off: 7.05pm AEST
Broadcast: 10 Bold, Paramount+
BUY TICKETS
