NEWRY City have recruited the help of a psychologist for their players as they come to terms with the soccer lockdown due to the on-going coronavirus scourge.
Club manager Darren Mullen has taken on a lead role at the club since local football authorities announced time-out on all collective football activities.
“I’ve sent out a training plan to the players to initially work from home along with advice from a one of our fans who’s a sports psychologist,” explained Mullen.
The boss was also considering a training idea that has been trialled by Chester Football Club where players train together but at least five metres apart.
Mullen, however, stressed that they would seek further expert advice on the novel idea.
“I watched a video of Chester running around an area of the pitch where they weren’t within five metres of each other. It’s a case of coming in and not congregating and people don’t shower,” he said.
“Of course, to do something when you’re avoiding each other, you’re extremely limited in that respect.
“But at the same time we’ll wait on people who know more about these things than I do. There’s no point in us jumping in trying to provide something when you might be doing more harm than good. But I’ve told the lads to pay heed to the advice given out and if they need to talk about anything to give me a shout.”
The manager has also instructed his players to stay away from gyms.
Mullen is a big advocate of the positive impact sport can have on the mental well-being of communities; without it some individuals may struggle.
Earlier this week, Mullen and Newry City player Decky Carville paid a home visit to one of their biggest fans Daniel Murphy. Daniel suffers from cystic fibrosis.
“I was reading on the BBC that ‘sport doesn’t matter - but it does’ because you have to think of people’s physical and mental well-being and sport has a huge part to play in that,” Mullen explained.
“We rang Daniel’s mother and myself and Decky Carville went down to his house and set up portable nets in his back garden. It was brilliant. Daniel would have done nets when he was younger, so he went into nets and we took a couple of penalties.”
Newry currently sit fifth in the Bluefin Sport Championship with a slim chance of breaking into the play-off spot, while Portadown, Loughgall and Ballinamallard United jockey for position at the top.
While Uefa hope to resume domestic leagues in mid-April, it’s a long shot. However, Mullen wouldn’t want the season to be null and void at this stage.
“If you’re comparing it to the English Premiership, [West Ham executive] Karen Brady came out and said what she said – I know she’s retracted it a bit since – about the season being null and void.
“I don’t think the season should be null and void. I don’t think it would be fair to Portadown or Ballinamallard who are above us and have done really well for a large part of the season.
“Whenever things do get back on track it should continue, but that in itself has problems because depending on how long it’s going to be for, you mightn’t have the same players. How would that affect other things like Europe?
“It’ll take a while for everything to fall back into place. It might take a few years to get back into a normal season again, but I certainly wouldn’t be one for wiping a season.”
Mullen added: “I think if we’d got to the stage of the league split, where everybody had played each other three times, I think that would have been enough of an indication of who will win it.
“But we’re not at that point, there is still plenty of football to play. And whilst teams are in a strong position teams have collapsed before. It’s not only promotion, it’s relegation as well as it could affect the finances of clubs.”
