Hayden Bird post Gills win
11 July 2010
Following Bromley's 2-1 victory over Gillingham in their first pre-season friendly, assistant manager Hayden Bird spoke to the club's official site to give us his views.
“I'm very pleased with the result today against Gillingham. It is great for the players to start pre-season with a victory as it gives everyone a morale boost, and I think we deserved to win. The performance showed the spirit and the attitude that all of the players have shown so far in pre-season and everyone has worked very hard. The fitness levels were very good and the performance was encouraging.”
Bird was also quick to praise the current squad after an impressive performance over the League Two side. “I believe in the players and I believe that we have a squad here that will have a really enjoyable season. If you look throughout the squad, we have some very good players such as Nic McDonnell who has come into the squad and is a real Bromley favourite, and I am very pleased for him to see him score. Players such as Wes Daly and Ryan Hall did well after coming on in the second half, and it was also very good to see young players play well, notably Reece Boyle who was very impressive in the first half.”
The assistant manager then went on to explain how the return of Bromley favourite Nic McDonnell came about. “Nic wanted to come back. I spoke to Mark, who met Nic, and we thought it would be a good move. I have to say, his attitude in training has been unbelievable, he has been absolutely first class and it has been a pleasure to work with him.”
The squad have been back on the training pitch for a few weeks now, and Bird quickly pointed out that it was all about fitness at this stage of the campaign.“It has been very difficult. We wanted the players to be mentally strong as well as physically strong so they have been working very hard and I think you could see that today. We played against a professional team that train five days a week doing double sessions, something which we do not have the luxury of getting, and they didn't look any fitter than us today.”
Bird was also eager to mention how pleased he was with how well the Bromley side did when in possession, something he believes is down to the excellent team spirit.“I'm surprised because we haven't done too much work with the ball, that really kicks in during the second half of pre-season. The group have definitely gelled together, they have worked hard together and gone through the pain barrier together, and because of that we have generated a really good team spirit which was evident today.”
Finally, many regular supporters will have noticed Jeff Hutton on the bench today with the management team, and Bird explained the reasoning for this.“Jeff is the new kit manager. He has worked very hard as kit manager and implemented a number of new things, and he is part of the management team. Everybody that is part of the team are a team, we're on the bench as a team, we win, draw and lose as a team and he is one of us.”
