Huddersfield Town Manager Danny Cowley discussed player fitness
- #HTTV spoke to Danny Cowley about the current situation
- Town Manager on life at home, coaching drills and player fitness
- Watch the full 20-minute interview below on #HTTV
#HTTV caught up with Huddersfield Town Manager Danny Cowley to discuss how he’s been getting on during this difficult period.
With football fixtures suspended and with the current Government guidelines it’s an unusual and tough situation for everyone.
Despite this, Town’s Manager is trying to take the positives from it and has sent his gratitude out to all those working hard to help the country.
“It’s a crazy time and feels very surreal. When we were told the Wigan game wouldn’t go ahead, I don’t think anyone anticipated we’d be away as long as we have been.
“We’re lucky enough to be fit and healthy here. We are trying to see the positives in it.
“We are very appreciative of all the work that’s been done by the NHS and the key workers – they’re doing a fantastic job in terms of looking after our country; our heart is with them.
“We are trying to adapt as well as we can, see the positives, reflect, learn and spend some time with the family as well.”
Despite this, Danny Cowley continues to work hard from home and provided an insight into what he and his brother/Assistant Manager Nicky Cowley have been working on.
“I think it’s a unique time. The only time in all our lives when someone’s hit the pause button. It’s given us a chance to reflect. Football management and the football industry is 100 miles per hour, even between seasons you don’t get the time to reflect.
“It’s been a good opportunity to do that, especially coming into the Club mid-season it has been a whirlwind. It’s given us a really good opportunity to reflect, look at areas we’ve done well, look at areas we could improve on.
“It’s certainly given us time to upskill. We’re working hard in terms of recruitment trying to look at some foreign leagues and watch football in different countries. We feel like we know the lower divisions in this country really well having come through them, so we’ve done some recruitment work in some different countries as well as our own.
“We’ve done some work around our coaching library to put all our drills together, so we can use that with the Academy, so there are smooth transitions for when the Academy players train with us.
“We’ve been trying to connect the drills to our philosophy, the way we want to play and trying to produce a coaching curriculum to Huddersfield Town, which will help our planning. We’ve been trying to find different ways on and off the grass to help coach and educate the players.
“We’re developing those provisions, which will in terms help the environment and players when we are back playing.”
With the goal to complete the 2019/20 campaign, Danny Cowley explained what he and his team have been doing to make sure the players are fit and healthy when football returns.
“Normally it’s easy because you look at the outcome you want to achieve and work backwards from there; that’s how you plan. Obviously at the moment, we aren’t sure when we’ll be back.
“The EFL have kind of given us a date around 16 May to go back to training and we anticipate a time of two to three weeks preparation time. We are working to those guidelines at the moment. We are working back from there.
“All the players are at different stages in terms of their fitness levels, some have played near on 35 games this season and others haven’t had as much football. We’ve managed to look at the players case by case and put together bespoke programmes for them.
“They’re categorised in small groups and the staff who are still able to work are looking after a small group each. That allows us to be in regular contact with the players and to monitor their fitness, outputs and progression.
“We’ve got to make sure we stay on top of their fitness levels so we can hit the ground running.”
You can watch the full 20-minute catch up with Danny Cowley below on #HTTV!
