Adelaide United set to meet Western United, Melbourne City during Victorian pre-season camp
Ben Halloran says Adelaide United’s Victorian camp will gauge its progress as the A-League campaign nears. But it will be a different experience to the Reds winger’s past pre-seasons in the Swiss Alps.
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It may not be the Swiss Alps.
But Ben Halloran said Adelaide United’s Victorian pre-season camp would provide an important indication of the club’s progress as preparations entered the home straight.
The Reds winger and his teammates would depart SA on Friday morning for five days of training and friendly matches against cross-border A-League opposition.
It was a far cry from Halloran’s first taste of a European pre-season in 2013, when he spent a week in Switzerland’s Alpine region with then German second-tier side Fortuna Dusseldorf.
“We were staying in this beautiful log cabin in the hills and for me that was pretty special,” Halloran, 27, recalled.
“You would normally go on a couple of camps each year and the first one is literally just gut-running to get your base level of fitness up.
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“But then we did team building stuff like we went hiking one day and then we went white-water rafting.
“You can’t really compare the two (pre-season camps).
“But just the change of scenery and routine is important for us right now, because it is such a long pre-season (in Australia).
“We can train week-in-week-out, but unless we test ourselves against opposition that we’re going to play in the league, we don’t really know where we stand.”
Adelaide, which this week progressed to the FFA Cup semi-finals, will travel to Ballarat to take on new franchise Western United at Morshead Park on Saturday.
The 24-player squad will then spend two days training, before fielding separate teams in back-to-back clashes with Melbourne City at the City Football Academy on Tuesday.
Halloran said the trip was another opportunity to embrace Dutch manager Gertjan Verbeek’s tactical shift, 22 days out from the season-opener against reigning champion Sydney FC.
“We’re not going to have the finished product by round one,” the six-cap Socceroo said.
“But it’s just about testing ourselves, knowing our style of play and then having confidence and faith in that.
“His (Verbeek’s) training methods are a bit different to (predecessor) Marco (Kurz), but he’s been very well received by the whole team.
“Everything we do in training is small-sided games and with the ball, which every footballer enjoys.
“It’s been important to him that we’ve done well in the cup, so going into the season we’re feeling confident in his style of play and he can feel that we’ve adapted to his methods.”
The Reds learned they would face A-League wooden-spooner Central Coast in the last four of the cup on Wednesday, October 2.
Halloran said the trip to Gosford would be a stern examination for the holder, given the strides the Mariners had made in their first pre-season under Alen Stajcic.
“They’re definitely a different outfit to last season,” said the Queenslander, who impressed despite missing six games due to an ankle injury in his debut Reds campaign last summer.
“If we were to have drawn them last year then we’d be licking our lips, but you can see they’ve got some big results already in the cup.
“If you get knocked out in round one of the cup, training can become a bit Groundhog Day-like.
“But if you have these cup games to look forward to, it really keeps things fresh and exciting.”