Back on clay

08 April, 2008 | 19:04

New site launching, so good idea to get a fresh blog up there...

Andy's going to be at Roehampton for a short time, before flying out to Spain to kick-start his clay season.

A lot of the usual faces are here: Matty Little fresh from a short break in Spain, Andy Ireland, Miles Maclagan and self-styled football genuis Carlos Mier...

Yep, Carlos was a late arrival at the five-a-side football stadium early on Tuesday morning. Each training day features a warm-up session, and when there's enough people around, football's usually the favourite option.

Problem on Tuesday was getting enough people together to make for a decent match. Manager par excellence Matty Little got on the mobile to bring in a few late transfers...

I'll spare you the gory details of what happened, although, for the record, Tuesday was the first time I'd ever been picked last to play for a team. The line of people got smaller and smaller until someone quietly said "....guess we'll take Rob then."

Despite myself, Matty Little, Jez Green and Carlos doing what we could, we were comprehensively battered.

Not surprising when you consider the opposition. ..

Yep, the other team was a bit heavy on the pro sportsman side of things. Andy's pretty handy as you might expect, Jamie Delgardo likes a dribble, and Aucks...well Aucks is working the Beckham hair at least...

So, warm-up over it was time for some proper hard work, and for the first time in a long time, that meant heading out to the clay court.

Acclimatising basically, nothing particularly groundbreaking; drills the order of the day...

Miles and Andy hit for a good couple of hours, watched from just out of shot by Jez Green (fresh from Miami) and Matty Little who discussed fitness, amongst other things.

One particular drill got the guys talking about Andy's background on the clay courts of Sanchez, where he was based as a teenager.

Apparently, one drill the Spanish coaches loved was to get their pupil to smack the ball from the baseline, which they would then volley back. Sounds dull until you're told that could carry on for thirty minutes at a time. Didn't matter if you needed water, you just carried on.

Technique had to be perfect the whole time, and here's Andy talking through the finer points of what they were and weren't looking for....