Thats a fair post. As I say, I don't agree, fitness, team building, morale, skills can all be achieved perfectly well in the UK and too the same level imo and I have yet to hear anything that tells me other wise.

And as for jetting off to South Africa and Malaysia for two weeks! Well if that isn't a perk then I don't know what is! I'm thinking about taking up hockey.

As I say, I don't have any problem with warm weather training, I just don't believe that its neccesary and clearly neither does Hull FC if they have cancelled it.

I agree with exiled from Hull you can hone the technical skills better on grass outside in a natural environment in good weather conditions. They will get plenty of cold and wet weather training at Brantingham. The gym is good for strength conditioning but for kicking/tackling technique/moves you cant beat grass. By the way have you tried doing Spout Hill now thats a training run.

I am pretty sure we would have benefited for all the reasons mentioned above but not going is not the end of the world. Perhaps the decision really is based upon it being a potential disruption to pre-season and I do think the fact that we've had the Aussies here from the start in autumn/winter conditions probably reduces the need for such a "bonding" session..

Well Bal

I'd love to see you argue your case with every major sports team that does it!

Could Hull offer better sports facilities that say one of the AIS venues in Australia, or one of the major University's in America, or even Barcelona?

West London has some of the best sporting facilities in the world, but add into the equation that not all are together, some dont offer accomodation on site, some do but dont have rehab or conditioning fcailities, some dont offer suitable catering or even seminar rooms!

Name me one place in UK, that would allow such a camp, where the players would not have to worry about external factors?

For starters FC AFAIK went for 10 days not 2 weeks and I seem to remember the weather wasn't great in Portugal last year - didn't it rain most of the time? I suspect the club have weighed up the relative costs and benefits and decided that the additional benefit you get for the cost (which must be considerable) doesn't pay back. If the last 2 seasons are anything to go by there's plenty of evidence that there's no season-long benefit. IMO it sounds like there's a lot of downtime, boredom and general pi$$ing about when you get 30 odd young blokes together and they do about 5 hours training out of 24. The fact that there's an element of being a jolly to it is another reason not to go this year - we can hardly say the current squad have earned any sort of bonus week in the sun after what they offered us last season. I think per se that warm weather training is a good idea, but I'm hoping that our camp will be more of "hard yards" version this year.

IMO it sounds like there's a lot of downtime, boredom and general pi$$ing about when you get 30 odd young blokes together and they do about 5 hours training out of 24.

And you couldnt be further from the truth.

For our warm weather training camps, a usual day would be as follows

7am - light run/stretch
9am - breakfast
10am - 12pm - Conditioning/weights
1pm - lunch
2.30pm - 5pm - on pitch training
6pm - 7pm - active recovery/medical centre open
8pm - 10pm - Dinner followed by evening meeting (to cover aspects of gameplay/days training/goals for following days training)

So pretty packed.

all us s havent made any connotations have we?
get off our soap box............

Some have, yup. usual suspect mind.

but his post went up before any of us s had even said anything about warm weather training, talk about paranoid....

Nope, some of your number were bleating on about it a while back, the post you quoted was only made 2 days ago.

but his post went up before any of us s had even said anything about warm weather training, talk about paranoid....

....no, but we can talk about blinkered HKR fans! I could cross reference over 200 posts on HDM articles, and numerous posts in the HKR forums about how HullFC staying in the UK is a sign of impending doom in West Hull yadda yadda yadda!

And to be honest - from a team who's only major claim is being better than a team who finished 12th, i'd try and concentrate on actually getting some silverware, and not on the state of affairs in the west!

I can see the pros and cons of warm weather training. It clearly has its benefits but the club has to decide if the financial cost of gaining those benefits is worth the investment. In the current financial climate I can see why they decided against it this year. This isn't a sign of money problems but rather a further example of the sound "business" sense that has seen us post a profit for the last 5 years.

Agree 100%, the club need to raise a fair amount of capital for The Boulevard, we've also paid some players off, so the cash flow needs managing correctly, how much would taking a squad, plus the support and coaching team to Portugal (or anywhere else) cost, about 35 people, at a cost of at least a grand each? We can't exactly point to the last few seasons training camps and say it was money well spent!

It would cost too much in the current climate and the ROI is shambolic as you rightly say

way way way more than a grand each!
Put 35 big lads in 1 room, eating their way through considerably more than the average person, 3 (maybe 4 times a day) for a week!

Add onto that facilitiy hire, and the numerous sundry costs (i.e. how much Powerade/gatorade they get through, banana's, dried fruit, snacks)

It will come to a lot.
A 10 day tour of Spain with England U21 mens hockey (sqaud of 18, maanagment of 4) would be put roughly at £65k.
And that was in 1998!

So you factor up inflation, plus the difference in type of athlete, and the increased numbers.

Good decsion HFC!