Start of Week 2: Crewe Alex

Yesterday was Sunday, our second day off in a row. We went to Llandudno, on the northern coast of Wales with Ken's family for UK Mother's Day (pictures to come). It was pretty nice, apart from being cold and windy. We attempted to have a picnic outside up near the top of hills that overlook the entire town and the town off in the distance. We had some success, but a few times things blew all over the place. We walked around the town for a while, of course testing out the local cafes and candy shops. Its a pretty nice British coast town, nice place to spend the day.

In more soccer related events, today is Monday and the start of our 2nd week in England. We trained earlier today with Crewe Alexandra of League 1 (2 levels below the premier league). I trained in with the keepers and Steve was in the with 1st team. Today was a pretty light day since they have a game tomorrow evening. Tomorrow morning we'll train with the reserves. The 1st teamers will obviously have off. After an hour or so of us keepers ripping shots on each other and the field players doing various games of keep away, we played a small sided game. It had been pretty windy the whole day, but during this game, the wind picked up a lot and it started raining hard. The rain was basically coming straight across and was just plain awful. I won't say that we can both comfortably play on this level since we've only been there for one day of light practice, but today we each held out own nicely, except in the small sided game it didn't seem as if my defense felt like playing, at all. I must have gotten scored on 20 times in the half an hour that we played. Steve put a couple in past the other keeper (including me there were 5 total, the starter is on loan from Everton) and made the opposing defenders look foolish at times.

The Crewe facility is much nicer than Stoke's. They have a larger team room, a pretty large weight and cardio room. It seems that have at least 2 full sized field turf fields and 3 full sized short-cut grass fields that are all in great shape. They also have a half field of low-cut grass and a off to the side field turf area with a few portable goals that's about 30x40 yards (40 across). Oh, they also have an indoor facility, which I'm assuming is an indoor sized field-turf field. For those unfamiliar, an "indoor" sized field is probably 2/3 the size of a normal field. The gear we received to train in at Crewe was nicer too, although in all fairness to Stoke, their dining and shower areas were much nicer and better equipped. I haven't seen it yet, but Ken mentioned that Crewe also had an indoor swimming pool. Apparently they've invested a lot of money into their youth development, which is one of the top programs in England. I think they're 4th right now, behind Man City, Everton, and Man United.

Tomorrow we're training with Crewe again, the reserves I believe and with Newcastle Town tomorrow night, followed on Wednesday probably at Port Vale of League 2. Off on Thursday, except with Newcastle Town on Thursday night, and back to Crewe on Friday. I think that should wrap it up for us in the UK in terms of training.

If anyone is wondering about anything specific, shoot us an email @ axelrobm@whitman.edu or phillisr@whitman.edu.

S&B