Poor training attendance hurts Village preparation
Sammy DeGraff has revealed that North Village haven’t had a proper training session in the past several weeks.On the eve of tonight’s Dudley Eve final against Dandy Town, the Rams skipper said other player commitments had prevented the team from holding a single meaningful practice.Despite all that the defending champions go into the game as the only unbeaten side on the Island and red hot favourites to claim their second piece of silverware of the season.So good are Village that there is talk of them winning all five titles available and going the remainder of the season without losing.DeGraff doesn’t think that’s realistic however, especially considering the issues surrounding player commitment.“There have been a lot of games this season already for us, I think right now we’ve started off well and all we can try and do is continue well,” said DeGraff.“I think it will be difficult to stay undefeated just because of the make-up . . . we are an amateur club. It’s hard for everyone to always come training, guys have jobs, families and different things like that, and even still (if they don’t) a lot of guys still don’t come training a lot.“We haven’t had a training session properly for the last few weeks really.”Talk of going undefeated inevitably adds an extra layer of pressure on a team and DeGraff said it was hard to ignore the discusions swirling around the Island about the chances of that happening.“I think you put unnecessary pressure on yourself when you think about going undefeated,” he said. “Our goal when we started off the season was not to be undefeated, you never want to lose a game but the reality of it happening . . . all we’re trying to do is win every competition that we play in and if that (going undefeated) happens, then thank God for that.”Having already won the CharityCup and flying high in the league, Village’s attention turns to the Dudley Eve tonight.While not the most important trophy up for grabs this season, DeGraff said the fact that Village were defending the title gave it a little bit more of an edge that it might otherwise have had.“As a team right now it’s a trophy that we’ve won already, so it’s the first trophy that we’re going to be defending. I think everybody is on the same page, we don’t want to lose,” he said.“It makes it a little bit more important because we’ve won this trophy in the past two years, so in some ways it’s like ‘we definitely don’t want to lose this one’. But at the same time out of all the trophies that you play for in the season this is the second least important, after the Charity Cup.“Dudley Eve is not part of the Triple Crown, but it’s a trophy, it’s up for grabs, we want to win it and I’m sure Dandy Town definitely want to win it as well.”
