Blackpool ready to train on the beach for visit of Manchester United

Posted Friday, December 03, 2010 by theguardian.com

Blackpool ready to train on the beach for visit of Manchester United
The Blackpool manager, Ian Holloway, turned down the opportunity to take his team to a warm-weather training camp this week.

Blackpool may train on the beach this morning in preparation for tomorrow's visit of Manchester United. With their regular training ground frozen they used an artificial pitch at a local college yesterday, but Ian Holloway felt the surface was not sufficiently grasslike and was worried about players picking up strains.

"We'll use the beach if we have to," the Blackpool manager said. "We wanted to use it last winter but on that occasion it turned out to be frozen solid like everywhere else. Teams often used to train on the beach in the old days, and Stanley Matthews used to work out on the beach before going to training. If it's good enough for a player of that calibre it will do for us."

Holloway was offered the option of a few days' warm weather training in Marbella but turned it down. "I though it was better to stay here – it was purely a personal decision," he said. "The chairman was willing to pay, and we had accommodation lined up, but in the end I thought it might not be a good idea to come back from the warm into cold like this. Besides, Charlie Adam was moving house."

Without undersoil heating Blackpool cannot be certain that the evening kick-off tomorrow will go ahead and are using warm-air blowers in an attempt to keep the pitch frost-free.

"The machine looks like something we've borrowed from a fairground," Holloway said. "I waited for about 10 minutes trying to get a hot dog. I hope the game can go ahead because the whole town has been looking forward to this fixture all season. If we play we stand a chance of being embarrassed on the pitch, but I think we'll be even more embarrassed if we have to call it off."