The Exiles kick off their Premiership campaign against Saracens at Twickenham on Saturday, but training for the season began on June 15 with players returning to get physically primed for the season ahead.
“We are looking to increase the physical levels of the previous season and are always trying to take a step up,” Irish’s Head of Strength and Conditioning Allan Ryan noted as the key aims for pre-season. “It is important to try and make sure the players get through injury free and are prepared for the season ahead.”
After a promising 2008-09 season which saw the club reach the Premiership final, injuries took their toll on Booth’s small squad last year, finishing outside the playoff spots and failing to progress through their group in Europe.
Ryan and his team are responsible for designing a programme to ensure the players are individually ready for the physical demands of professional rugby through a combination of general weights and team skills sessions, with additional tailored gym regimes, fat burners and skill development.“You have to try and make training as specific to the game as possible,” Ryan insisted. “A 40 minute jog isn’t the best way to spend 40 minutes training - the intensity isn’t there to get the body ready for what is going to come.
“If you try and be as lean as you can and as strong as you can it goes a long way to keep you injury free through a hard season whether you are a professional player or someone who plays at the weekend and has a job to go to on Monday - the last thing they want to do is go in with a pulled hammy or a busted shoulder.
“The senior players are the same as they want to be available for selection as often as possible throughout the season and that’s the most important part of what we try to do - to make Toby’s [Booth] job difficult by giving him a full selection of players to choose from.”
Despite a small blip, Toby Booth is happy with where is squad is at this stage of the season. The head coach said: “We had a little disruption with the Leinster game being called off - that means not everyone will have a competitive fixture in the squad before we play the first game, which is disappointing because we like to give people opportunities. But there are 18 games in the first 10 weeks so people are going to be getting plenty of game time to get match fit.
“We did go to the French national training camp in Paris, where the facilities were fantastic, and that has allowed us to springboard on. There was no doubt in my mind after that we were in a much better place than we had been for some considerable time.”
Booth also stressed the difficult yet vital balance required between giving players enough contact time to be ready for the demands of the months ahead, while not hammering them into the ground during pre-season: “We have trained with London Welsh, as we have a partnership with them, so instead of battering all 32 players at once, we can work just 15 at a time.
“The players still need to be battle fit and they still require the same levels of contact, but it’s about how you can protect each other and work a bit smarter.”
The 19-year old back-row forward is now very much focus on helping his club fulfil their ambitions, and has been enjoying the build up to this campaign: “From a players perspective we go into pre-season with mixed feelings.
“Playing rugby in the hot weather gives you an opportunity to experiment and see how it is all going, so that is a good bit of fun, and especially after a break you are just looking forward to coming back in and building up to that first game.
“But then you also have the side of it where pre-season is quite tough, can be quite brutal, but you feel good after it is done. I’m happy to do it and it is worth it.”
One of the latest products of the London Irish Academy, Gibson was allowed an extra few weeks off because of his international exploits and returned back to his club later with this summer’s other tourists. “The Argentina tour was pretty tough and I had a lot of game time, but I have been eased back into it quite nicely.
“Obviously I was still feeling it a little bit despite the two to three weeks off but that has all gone now and I’m raring to go.
“Sometimes I feel a little bit tired because of the tour but otherwise I can’t really complain - if anything it gave me a boost coming into the pre-season which is a good thing.”
Gibson’s individual goals for the season are to cement his place regularly in Irish’s match day 23 and make the starting line-up in some of their big Heineken Cup games against Munster, Toulon and the Ospreys. “I still have to put a bit of weight on,” he conceded, “that is one of my main aims as well as generally staying fit, getting stronger and improving on the physical side of things through gym work and nutrition.
“As a team we have been looking at the season’s plan, making a couple of changes from last year, and we’ll see how that all goes when it starts to come into place now.”
Booth has emphasised his desire to fight with his London Irish side on all fronts, but prioritised the Premiership as the key target. To achieve these aims his side undoubtedly need to be fortunate by avoiding injuries, and as they build up to the first game, Allan Ryan emphasised the final week of training is about getting mentally prepared and ironing out any creases: “The training intensity may go up but the volume will drop a bit.
“You tell the players all the extras that they have to do, the coaches may still feel they have certain aspects of the game they need to look at and if the players themselves don’t feel something is quite right, then they have the chance to change it.
“You just try and focus their attention on the game in hand.”
With the work done in the gym and the training paddock, all that is left to be seen is whether Irish can continue their hard work through the season, stay injury free and still be competing for trophies come the business end of the season next May.
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