Asian Cup 2015: Socceroos star Alex Wilkinson calls on family to ensure he reaches fitness

IF IT weren’t for Alex Wilkinson’s brother-in-law, the Socceroos centre back might not have been in a position to play in Friday night’s Asian Cup opener.

Socceroos training at Lakeside oval, South Melbourne Australia. 5th January. Australia's Alex Wilkinson during a light training session. Picture : George Salpigtidis

IF IT weren’t for Alex Wilkinson’s brother-in-law, the Socceroos centre back might not have been in a position to play in Friday night’s Asian Cup opener.

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With his Korean League season for Jeonbuk Motors wrapping up on November 30, Wilkinson had four weeks to kill before coming in to Aussie camp ahead of this month’s tournament.

Alex Wilkinson is in great shape ahead of the Asian Cup.

The 30-year-old returned home to Sydney where he would stay with his parents and, under instruction from Football Federation Australia’s football conditioner Craig Duncan, had a week’s break.

But then it was back to work.

Duncan drew up an intensive training regime for Wilkinson, predominantly full of running — fartlek runs, cone-to-cone work, sprint work — as well as a few gym sessions a week.

But when some ball work was thrown in to the mix, the former Central Coast Mariner clearly needed some help.

Some mates were called in, but particularly helpful was his now brother-in-law, Ross, who married Wilkinson’s sister in mid-December.

“He plays local state league stuff, so it was good to have someone to kick around with who could actually kick a ball,” Wilkinson said.

“I was flirting with the idea of going in with an A-League team, but I didn’t want to risk an injury or anything like that so I thought it’d be safer to do that sort of thing.”

Not one for playing too many individual sports, Wilkinson said his pre-training camp routine was a unique experience.

“It’s definitely different,” he said.

“Football is a team sport and you’re used to training with a bunch of guys so it’s strange, I’m not used to it because it’s not an individual sport at all.

“But it was pretty easy to motivate myself. We’ve got this tournament coming up so I definitely didn’t lack motivation in that regard knowing that all of these boys coming back from Europe in the middle of their seasons would be flying.

“I had to make sure that I worked hard so I could be on the same level, otherwise it’d be pretty obvious to the coaching staff.”

Wilkinson had a huge 2014, playing 34 games — including eight Asian Champions League games — for Jeonbuk and another 11 Socceroos games, including all three at the World Cup in Brazil.

But Duncan said Wilkinson’s last month has him primed for the Asian Cup.

“In actual fact he’s come in in better shape than he was when he came to us in Japan in November (for the Socceroos friendly),” Duncan said.

“He was in Korea, probably a bit fatigued towards the end of season, has a bit of a break then done this and he’s come in great.”

Originally published as Asian Cup 2015: Socceroos star Alex Wilkinson calls on family to ensure he reaches fitness