6 Jan 2025

Inside Malaga Day 1: A chat with Director of Rugby, Andy Kelly

​It was a tough journey through snow and flight delays yesterday, but the boys are hard at it in Malaga on Day 1 of warm weather pre-season training camp

It was a tough journey through snow and flight delays yesterday, but the boys are hard at it in Malaga on Day 1 of warm weather pre-season training camp.


Catching up with Director of Rugby at the Giants, Andy Kelly, he praised the group for the way the delays and challenges were overcome during the travelling, and states how this adversity can and has aided the group as a whole.

“I think the very fact that the players and the staff even left home yesterday was an amazing determination to make this pre-season camp work. It’s not a cheap exercise, and to have lost it to weather conditions would have been awful for us. To their credit, they got to the Giants Training Centre, Birch services and some straight to Manchester Airport. To get on the flight and be here is a miracle in itself. It shows the togetherness that is in the camp and a willingness to solve problems for each other. Robbo was picking players up in a four-wheel drive, other players were doing the same. There’s a real togetherness. I thought that yesterday was the first time we had been pressure tested as a group and they came up with all the right answers.”


When asked for an update on how Day 1 was going, Andy reinforces the fact that it is not a holiday, it’s hard graft and the boys are buying into it, despite day 1’s weather being a little below par.

“They’re out there now doing full contact. Although it’s supposed to be warm weather, it’s quite wet and a bit chilly, but not like the conditions at home. It’s a working camp. There’s two sessions a day, with some time off on Wednesday, but even on the day we travel home, they’re training in the morning on the field. There’s not a lot of time to draw breath for them, they’ll be hard at it.”


The group togetherness will most definitely be strengthened on the trip, bringing them together and forming bonds that can only benefit the lads on the field. Which brings added pressures to those organising it to allow maximum impact throughout. Andy speaks about how that has been put in place to allow the players to feel the benefits of being together, and taking the strain away from Robbo, Finn and the rest of the coaching staff.

“It’s massively important. It puts added pressure on me to make sure everything runs smoothly. What you don’t want is a bad camp. You want the players to come and things they need be there and readily available for them. Same with the coaches, we want them to come in and be focussed on coaching on the field. With everything facilitated, the players have to come and work and be together. The camaraderie is there, and it’s a hard camp, but the relationships they are building on the field is key. A lot of it will be team play and they’ll be putting the work in through the week.”


Looking ahead to the upcoming Bradford friendly at The John Smith’s Stadium, Andy Kelly would like to see the hard work from pre-season bearing fruit, and admits that it will be a different kind of challenge with a team playing opposite them.

“I try to temper expectations a little bit. I’ll be looking for signs that what we have seen in pre-season, when we’re under pressure, and revert to our instinctive type, that what we have seen is what comes to the forefront again. We talked about determination, tenacity and meeting the challenge that’s outside the box with the travel, we want to see that on the field. I talk about pressure-testing, pre season training is ideal, but playing against teams from outside the group, that’s exactly when you become pressure tested.” 

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