Steve Daley on 'crucial' Tenerife trip for England para teams

Steve, looking back, how was the week from your perspective?

It was great. To have that period of time with the players over five days is just great and you can get so much out of it.

For one, you’re taking them to a different environment and obviously they've got to travel as they would for any tournament. So giving players the experience of travelling together, going through an airport, staying in the hotel and then setting schedules which they're going to have to follow when they're at any tournament is good preparation for them.

And to then have time with them on the court, but also for the other staff to have time with them around physical preparation, the psychology of what we're doing - it just allows you to have that capacity where you can get into a little bit more detail with them. To go straight away after Christmas and get back into some sort of routine is really beneficial to allow us to kick-start the new year.

How did everyone cope, because it must be more intensive than what they're generally used to in terms of training?

Well, we talk about stretching and challenging players, but we also make sure that we put the right support around them. And I think it’s about finding that happy medium, the balance of how far you can really push people psychologically, physically and technically but then surrounding them with world-class staff that really understand what is needed.

For a lot of our amateur players, training back-to-back in a day is hard, but doing it three days in a row really starts to push them. A large majority of the players thrived on it but for others it was maybe a step too far. But that's part of their journey of learning and if we don't do it, then we don't know what they're capable of.

Ultimately, we're trying to prepare them for tournaments and when you go away to a tournament, sometimes you're going to play back-to-back games across seven, eight or nine days. So it’s intense preparation for that and we need players to be able to do that on a regular basis.

That's all part of working with para athletes who don't get the opportunity because they're not in a professional environment. So for us to give them a small glimpse of what's ahead, I think really helps their development in the long term. It's hard to do that here in January in England, because the darkness and the weather at this time of year may have a negative impact on a player’s mindset of how they approach training at this level.

Your squad are first up in terms of tournaments with the European Championship in March, so it would've been extremely useful for you to get that time with your players?

Absolutely crucial. One of the biggest challenges for us as coaches is contact time. We're trying to support a lot of amateur players remotely in the environments they're in and they're not exposed to high performance environments on a regular basis so for them to have that with us is crucial.

We can tap up on the technical work and we can physically test them, but we aren’t going to get them fit in three days. They have to come with a great baseline, and then over the next five weeks, what can they go and do themselves? This trip allowed us to show them what we need as we lead into a tournament. And those one-to-one conversations is the biggest one, because players want reassurance.

They want to feel like they're doing the right things and understand the importance of recovery, hydration and routine. We haven't named the squad yet and we have two camps to go and after that, we’ll name the squad so, what can players do over those camps to really prove to the staff what they're capable of.

But now they've had five days with us and seen the importance of just travelling, staying in a hotel and having down time and being together, that is as essential as any tactical work that we would do because they're going to have to bond as a team and they're going to have to rely on each other.

You only get to see that when they're in a different environment, because St George's Park is something they're familiar with. But when we put them in an environment which is new, how are they going to cope with that? We’ve got a real mix of young players, mature players, players with experience, and that always throws them in a different light.

How are we approaching the Euros in March? Excitement in the group at another chance to challenge for a medal?

Yeah, absolutely. It's not every day you get to represent England in a major tournament and you have to grab hold of that.

I think the players understand the importance of that. We had the World Championship in June, and we've really tried to learn how we can improve on our performance. We lost a couple of senior players just before the World Championship, and that had a major impact on our preparation.

So going into this one, we're in a much healthier position in terms of competition for places. There's a real excitement, anticipation and it'll be a nice build up to get us there. We still have two camps, and a couple of opportunities to engage with the players so I think we're in a good place and really it's about the next five weeks before we travel to Croatia.

The Tenerife trip generally, aside from your role as head coach, it must be good to get a closer look at the teams across the board for your role as para talent lead?

It's great to see young players given the opportunity to come and be around senior squads, so that's a big thing for me. Seeing how young people develop, and for some of them it's their first trip away so that's a really great experience for them to be exposed to being in and around senior players.

The culture right across para football is just growing year-on-year and that's thanks to opportunities like this where we can be a team together, because every player and member of staff adds to the culture that we're trying to create.

That’s not just a winning mentality, but also around really understanding each other's challenges and strengths and how they can help each other. It was just great to see them on the pitch and courts in the training sessions, how they support each other and it's that ‘one England’ para philosophy which we're all in together.

Of course it can be challenging when you take that number of players and staff away, but I think the benefits far outweigh the challenges. A lot of people have taken so much away from it.