What position will Usain Bolt play for Central Coast Mariners
IT is fitting that this week marked the 10-year anniversary of Usain Bolt’s Beijing Olympics 100m triumph.
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IT is fitting that this week marked the 10-year anniversary of Usain Bolt’s Beijing Olympics 100m triumph.
In front of 91,000 spectators at the Bird’s Nest stadium and a global TV audience pushing two billion, the towering 21-year-old crushed a world-class field beneath his golden spikes.
His world-record time of 9.69 seconds might have been lower still had he not slowed to smile for the cameras and celebrate his preposterously effortless feat.
Starting on Tuesday, the jaunty Jamaican will strive to prove himself to only one man — Central Coast Mariners coach Mike Mulvey.
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And while the world will certainly watch his latest attempt to realise his professional football aspirations, this will be no diva event like the blue riband 100m, and nothing will be guaranteed like those eight Olympic gold medals in his cabinet.
Evidence of recent trials suggests Bolt won’t be smoking the field in Gosford, and the Mariners’ coaching staff will likely spend the coming weeks checking their celebrity triallist can do the basics.
First touch, passing range, coordination on the ball and positional awareness will all be under the microscope and play a considerable part in determining his A-League potential.
Can he catch up with the game’s technical elements usually learnt during those invaluable early years and developed over decades?
Bolt did play a bit as a kid. Later, though, there’s no way a track and field athlete at the peak of his powers would have ventured anywhere near a football field where the risk of injury is so high.
This is where the unknowns lie. Word is he’s a fast learner, and the man himself last year half-jokingly suggested he could stack up to Wayne Rooney if he trained hard enough.
He might have to first ensure he can cut it with Matt Simon and Connor Pain.
On this front, Mariners training will make for a strangely incongruous setting, one in which Bolt is both the maestro and amateur.
And where will his speed be best utilised? Throw him up front and send long balls over the top?
That option is great if Bolt can play. If he struggles to finish, opposition teams will work that out quickly, drop deep to ensure there’s no space behind and nullify him.
Likewise on the wing, challengers wouldn’t have a hope of catching him but success would require a certain amount of trickery, not to mention the capacity to cross.
A less sexy alternative might be full-back, where such a physical, intimidating presence would be hard to beat.
Wherever the 31-year-old is best placed, stamina and strength are two attributes he’s not lacking.
An athlete of such calibre knows how to keep himself fit, and from all reports Bolt has kept to a strict training program under the careful supervision of some of the world’s top medical and high-performance professionals.
Still, when he hands himself over to the Mariners’ strength and conditioning department an assessment of his fitness and physicality will be the very first task.
And however this experiment pans out, Mulvey and sporting director Mike Phelan, a former assistant coach at Bolt’s favourite team Manchester United, will experience one of the more peculiar tasks of their managerial careers in ascertaining Bolt’s genuine football value.
Who knows, maybe the sprint king has golden studs too.
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