Gym time for Swindon (From Swindon Advertiser)

Gym time for Swindon

7:00am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Rugby By Andy Warren

SWINDON are set to hit the gym to up their fitness levels after Saturday’s visit to Reading Abbey was postponed due to a frozen pitch.

The majority of the Swindon squad had not played for a fortnight after missing the club’s defeat to Coney Hill to attend fly-half Adam Westall’s wedding, and after Saturday’s game was postponed, they will be without competitive action for three weeks.

The game has been moved to this Saturday, and Westall told the Advertiser the enforced break could take its toll if they did not work on their conditioning.

“I think it will hit the lungs a little bit when we do finally get back playing because it will have been a little while since a lot of us have played a game,” he said.

“To try and avoid that we have been hitting the fitness side of things a fair bit.

“We had a hard pre-season so we will still have some of that fitness in the tank, but not all of it, so we will have to work even harder now.

“We have been together as a team for a couple of years now so we know our gameplan inside out, so we need to get back to the hard graft.”

The squad took advantage of the postponement to gather to watch England’s opening Six Nations match against Scotland at Murrayfield, and despite Stuart Lancaster’s men picking up the win, Westall was not overly impressed with what he saw.

“A few of the guys got together to watch the game up at the club which was good, even if it was not the most entertaining of matches,” he said.

“We are a side that are two or three years behind the likes of Ireland and Wales in terms of development, and I don’t think many steps have been taken forward since the World Cup. But there are new coaches in place so we have to give them a little bit of time.”

One bright spot for Westall was the debut of Owen Farrell, the son of rugby league legend Andy Farrell who is now alongside Lancaster on the England coaching staff.

“I like the whole father and son story to it, and it is good to see that sort of stuff going on in our sport,” he said.

“His dad is a rugby legend, even if it is in the other code, and reached the very top of his game, so if Owen can become half the player his father was then England are going to do well.

“He just seems to have that edge and is cocky, which is something we do not have a lot of in the England team.

“We need to have a bit of that to be able to compete because all the top southern hemisphere sides do.”