with Mark Reynolds

MAN OF STEEL

He might not get changed in a phone box, but Mark Reynolds is Aberdeen’s man of steel.

Born in Motherwell, in the shadow of Ravenscraig, once the steel production capital of Scotland, you’ll find that steel at the core of Mark Reynolds’ character.

After all, he’s played every minute of every game so far this season for the Dons. Not that that statistic carries much weight with some in the dressing room.

“As Willo Flood keeps telling me, “It’s not how many minutes you play, it is how good you are for those minutes!” So you don’t get any credit here for being an ever present, you still need to put in the performances to guarantee you are going to be playing. I have been lucky throughout my career with injuries. I have already managed to play two full seasons where I have played every minute of every game and hopefully, this could be the third”.

All of which is a far cry from a childhood where Mark was left sidelined for a full 12 months – not just from football, but from virtually any kind of physical activity.

“When I was 10 I was playing football at Motherwell and was also doing a lot of athletics including the triple jump, cross country running etc. When I was about 12, I got Osgood-Schlatter’s in my knee. It is a painful condition that affects the upper part of the shinbone. It most commonly occurs in teenagers who play sport, basically it is something you can get if you do too much sport when you are young.

“I went to see the Doctor and he said it was just growing pains but luckily, because I was with Motherwell I was able to go and see John Porteous, the physio – there are not many 12 and 13 year olds that are going to get that type of treatment at that age. He basically told me not to do anything for a year. So I never trained, I never ran, I never jogged, I never did any PE at school. I was out of the game for a whole year. I could not even go out and play football with my pals. The only thing I could do was a bit of swimming two times a week to keep fit. I listened to the physio and stuck religiously to it. After my year out, I went back to see John and he got me going again. I did not put my body under any stress or strain. My body was able to grow naturally and maybe that’s a reason I haven’t picked up many injuries now.

“Another factor in my view is that I don’t drink. I know boys who like a recreational drink but being a professional athlete, I think it causes chaos with your body and if you are at the top level in sport, it is something you can do without. I never started to drink so it has not been hard to stop. I think that has helped me not get injured because my body never has to recover during training. My body is never running at a deficit and is always in as good a condition as it can be. There has been a drinking culture within Scottish football. It is something that has been ingrained but I don’t think it is anywhere near as bad as it was.

“People are always looking for a secret formula when it comes to my injury record, but there isn’t one, though luck does play a part too with contact injuries etc. A good diet is important, eating the right things, but the biggest thing when I was younger was sleep. Nicky Weaver is always commenting on the amount I sleep, so it is something I still do. Sleep is something that gets completely overlooked. People don’t bother about how long they are sleep for or the quality of sleep they get. When I first became a full-time professional, all I would do was train and sleep. After getting something to eat, I would be in bed by 8.00pm. Even now during pre-season, my wife goes back down the road because I’m not much fun to be with and just train and sleep.

“As an athlete, your body is the tool of your trade, so I do enjoy learning about how it works and that knowledge also helps avoid injuries. If you ask the physios, they will tell you that I am never out of their room, badgering them for information and kidding on I know how to do their job! I I think it is fair to say that I understand my body. The phyisos will also tell you I am always in with niggles. If something does not feel quite right, I go and see them because I like to keep on top of things. I know when my body is right and when it’s not, I know when to push it and I know when to take a step back. There is a famous quote that says, “If you train at 100%, you will play at 100%” but I think that is a lot of rubbish. If you train at 100% every day, you would blow up. There is no sport in the world where an athlete trains at 100% every time they go into a session. There will be days where I do not push myself too hard and there are other days where you can go at it as hard as you want.

“In terms of the body and the way it relates to football, I think there is still a lot we can still learn and there are maybe some things we can learn from other sports. But football is completely different to any other sport that is played. There is no game that is played for 90 minutes at such a high intensity. Rugby is a physical sport but there is quite a bit of stopping and starting. Athletes like Usain Bolt train to peak a couple of times a season. Ice hockey is a very demanding sport but the players get substituted after a couple of minutes. Cycling is also very demanding from a physical point of view but they are not doing the Tour de France every week.

“Footballers are trained to peak every seven days. It is brutal at times. People are always trying to draw comparisons between sports, but they are very different. There is so much emphasis with young players on needing to be physically right that there is sometimes not enough time dedicated to working on technical skills.

“I don’t think I am the most gifted player, I am not the best passer or the most technically gifted but I work hard at my game and I work hard on my fitness. That is something that can always be at a very high level on a Saturday even if other parts of my game are having an off day. I can always have a physical presence on the pitch. Regardless of performance or how good or bad a team is or who is on form, you should never go out for a 90 minutes and be outworked or outfought. That is something you can always control.

“If you have 11 guys who are going out and fighting and giving 100% and never giving up and always wanting to be a winner, then that is half the battle. As long as eight or nine of your players turn up and play some football, you will get more good results than you will bad. If a team turns up and is better than us then fair enough. Sometimes you have to hold your hands up and say you were beaten by a better team or beaten by a piece of individual brilliance but we should never be out fought”.

Given Mark’s fascination with the physical side of football, you’ll not be surprised to learn that he welcomes the arrival of sports scientist Graham Kirk at the football club.

“His appointment at the club is very significant. I think it has been very evident in a number of games this season we have looked stronger and fitter than other teams, especially during the final 15 minutes or so. I feel as fit as I have ever done playing football. It is good to know at the end of the 90 minutes that you have still got a bit left in the tank.

“We have boys in the changing room like myself, Jamie, Barry, Willo, Russell, boys who have played the game for 10 or 15 years. They know football and they know about the physical side, so any sport scientist would get found out very quickly if they did not know their stuff, but Graham is very good. Everyone gets on very well with him and buys into what he is saying. His sessions are enjoyable. When you feel it is getting too tough or we are doing too much, he pulls it back straight away, you don’t even need to say anything to him, he already knows. There have been times in the past in my career where coaches would go on too long or in some cases not do enough and are simply not on the same wavelength as the players. Since Graham has come in he has been brilliant.

“The gaffer listens to Graham in terms of what we should do in training and how hard he should push us. Even the food on away trips has completely changed and there are other little things he has changed. That is synonymous with the way the manager has been since he has come in, there have just been little changes here and there, not massive ones. We are now starting to see all the little things making a difference. They are now culminating in the big change that everyone is talking about now. It has been a very clever and successful approach.

“I have never worked with a manager before that pays so much attention to every little detail. Every manager is different but the gaffer is of the school that believes that everything that can possibly be done, should be done in preparation for a game of football. I share that opinion.

“As soon as a game is finished, the work begins for the next game. We will come in on a Monday morning and the team we are playing, their starting XI or potential starting XI will be up on the board in the changing room. We will then think all week about the player or players we will be up against. The training all week is geared towards the game on the Saturday and will change depending upon our opponents. We then spend time with Greig, the video analyst, and look at the strengths and weaknesses of the team we are playing.

“Pittodrie is a good place to be at the moment. We have taken confidence from the way the season has gone so far. There is a fine line between keeping the confidence and being arrogant or having a misplaced confidence, where you think we can just turn up for games and we are going to get results. The confidence we have got is from the hard work we have put in on the training ground and the team spirit we have created.

“There is a lot of work being done and it is easier to get us working harder because we have been getting results. Some times when you come in, if you push boys too hard or change too many things and things don’t go well for you straight away, then people start asking you questions or players don’t buy into it. Everything that has been done so far has been great and has taken us up to the level we need to be at. As the manager keeps saying, we are not anywhere near as good as we can be. The potential level of football this group could play at is very exciting. It is great to be involved with a club that is going in the direction that we are going”.

One of the big steps forward has come defensively this term, the Dons among the meanest teams in the land when it comes to giving away goals. It hasn’t happened by accident though.

“There is a lot of work that goes into defending. We work for hours on end on the training field. We know each other’s games now and everyone is familiar with what everyone else does and everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. It is great being part of a defensive unit, and I include Jamie in that, that knows what everyone else is doing. Although we have chopped and changed the back four it is a good thing the manager has had the option to do that. It does not matter who plays, from the work we do in training, we are all familiar with each other. Maybe last season, because of injuries, you did not have the chance to practice in training.

“We walk out onto the field and you know exactly what you are doing and you know exactly what your options are in terms of set pieces, in terms of who should be available for the ball and when we are defending, you know who should be marking who and who should be tracking this runner and that runner. Also, when you look at the team there are a lot more winners on the field than there has been in recent years. Russell is the club captain and wears the armband (although in one recent game I forgot to give it to him when he came off the bench but we won’t mention that!) but there are a lot more captains. There are guys who are willing to lead and lead by example. It makes things so much easier for the young boys coming into the side when they have got that kind of experience and leadership there that will help them through games. If you look through the history of football, all the great sides had a lot of leaders in their team.

“Not only are there winners, there are players who have that desire to win. Even in training now, there is a little edge to it. There are always tackles flying in and there are people falling out with each other, which is what you want. When you have five or six players with that tough mentality, it galvanises the other boys and it starts to become infectious”.

While the next few weeks will see the Dons concentrating on consolidating a leading place in the league, it’s hard not to cast the occasional glance towards February and thoughts of that League Cup semi-final and the Scottish Cup tie with Celtic.

“It will be a huge week that will shape our season. We could be through to one cup final and into the next round of the other – possibly we will even be the favourites if we put Celtic out. Although the Scottish Cup draw was not the best, if we want to win cups, you generally need to beat Celtic. I don’t think there can have been many bigger weeks for the club in recent years, certainly not during my time at Pittodrie. Players like having those kinds of big games to look forward to just as much as the fans do.

“What we must do first is to keep pushing and hopefully go into that week in a good position in the league as well. It is vitally important we go into the cup games with a good run of form behind us and with our confidence high. There’s a long way to go before those matches and hopefully we will be flying when the time comes. All I can guarantee is Aberdeen will work as hard as possible to get two positive results. But I can also guarantee we will be looking for nine positive results before we get there. That’s the way we approach things at Pittodrie now”.