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6.8.2002
Pre-season diet

Woking-Palace 1-4
Palace-Charlton 1-1



Run Aki! Run! Sounds like a definite Academy Awards winner in the world of film industry. However there are no Oscars given from this because it is just a normal call from Crystal Palace football clubs training ground in the pre-season. Like it is in the any other club as well.

If the life is like a box a chocolate because you never know what you get, I can’t really say the same about the pre-season. The easy bet is on running. On the other hand maybe you can call it some kind of chocolate anyway: the minging marzipan ones with dodgy top in the far corner of the chocolate box that you anyways tried to offer people visiting you.

The fact is that even though chocolate shouldn’t be in professional athletes diet, it is the ones who are prepared to eat and actually do eat these mentioned minging ones, will often turn out to be the winners in the end. At least I haven’t heard of a winner who didn’t have any sweat on his shirt.

I wouldn’t play football if the whole sport were all about being in the pre-season. I think you would have to be a bit mental to enjoy this torture. The worst part is coming back from the holidays. The basic rule is that the better the summer you have had the harder the pre-season feels like. Obviously I have kept myself training and quite fit, but getting the engine really going needs some harder tools. So I run and just beg the season and the games to start soon.

It might be uncomfortable but yet a good preparation and fitness training are vital. You really have to go through that one thousand kilometres of horseshit to reach a state where you can have some success and enjoy the actual game. One wise man once said: the success comes before the work only in the dictionary. I am not that wise or even have a proper dictionary and I don’t even know how much horses excrement that would make in miles, but I am pretty sure that this wise man had a strong case there.

This doesn’t mean that we should go back to the old school and run just because of the sake of running. Running is not everything. Football is. Nobody wants a team full of Forrest Gumps. There has to be reason for doing things. After all players are not training to become new Steve Crams, they are training to become better footballers. And the closer the fitness training matches the actual requirements of the game, the better the players will become. Good thing is that the forrestgumping has diminished a lot from football towards the more structured and scientific ways of getting players fit.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it at all. After all you have to eat quite a bit of that minging chocolate even to survive the long season. The pace and the physical requirements of the game have increased enormously in the passed few years. I don’t believe that there are still players that are so talented that they can ignore the whole concept of fitness or training and just rely on their skills. You have to have both fitness and skills to success and enjoy the game. So it is necessary train a bit of both. Or a lot, like us untalented geezers like me and Forrest Gump.

Anyways I would like to inform missing three pounds of fat, one hamstring muscle and ridiculous amount of sweat somewhere in Beckenham area. If found, please contact the knackered looking blonde geezer or at least buy the poor fellow a Lucozade.

I have once again eaten the required chocolate and some more to be fit. However some small but annoying injuries prevented me playing more than two games before the real campaign begins.


This time I recommend:
1. Forrest Gump -movie
- simple is many times the best -
2. Hard but reasonable training
- best preparation for the season -
3. Lucozade
- any drink will do when you are knackered -


I do not recommend:
1. Aerial cars -minicabs
- from my experience they are dishonest, rude and unreliable scum -
2. Not having a dictionary
- everyone can read the reason -
3. Venezzia -cafe in Whitgift Center
- Dont go closer than couple of miles to their lasagne -


Yes, chocolate is a metaphore

Aki Gump