Former Torquay United manager Kevin Nicholson on pre-season and the opening day

Former Torquay United manager Kevin Nicholson talks us through pre-season and the much-awaited opening day of the season…
 
Everyone in football has had pre-seasons where they lost every game and hit the ground running when the real stuff started – or won every game and then struggled to get going in the season.
It is getting down to the final stages now though. Most teams have played four or five games and they’re getting a feel for each other.
Unfortunately the realism is some of these games are almost worthless. You play against teams not at your level who play different styles. Sometimes you play someone from higher up where you’re getting a work-out from running around trying to stop them playing and other times you’ll be dominating possession against a team from lower down.
I remember when we played West Brom in pre-season a week before the new campaign. We beat them and Tony Pulis walked in after and said, ‘Well, that’s messed you up!’ We were happy with the performance but the next week we were playing Macclesfield in the league.
We’d just played a game where we had to sit behind the ball, let West Brom pass it around and then hit them on the break a couple of times.
It was false for what was coming. The first time a full-back at Macclesfeld got it, they turned us, ran after it and we were dealing with something we hadn’t faced. It was a different tempo, a different style and it all hits you in one go.
Soon the opening day will be upon us and all the hard work and preparation everyone has been putting in will have something on it.
First games of the season conjure up good and bad memories. I remember when I was at Notts County we’d had an incredibly positive pre-season. We played one of the top teams from Belgium at Meadow Lane and won to finish a pre-season where we’d smashed everyone. Positivity was high and, of course, we were going to win the league.
We had Bristol City away on the first day. On the way down the air conditioning on the coach broke. It was 30 degrees outside and there was a balloon show on so it took us about five hours to do a two-hour trip. We got there 20 minutes before kick-off.
Of course, the referee wouldn’t delay the start and at half-time we were 4-0 down. That was a real slap in the face. After six weeks of hard graft, everyone feeling good, we’d lost the first game 5-0. Then we had to get back on a coach with no air con. Reality hit.
Then there’s the flip side from when Torquay were in League Two. We’d stayed up in our first season by finishing the campaign with six clean sheets. At the start of the next season we destroyed Northampton 3-0, I managed to scored, for a perfect opening day.
We actually didn’t concede until the end of the fourth game but we’d set a record for minutes without conceding and we went on to make the play-off final.
From a personal point of view, it’s been interesting keeping tabs on everything this summer. The signings, how teams are doing and setting up. It’s been different.
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed not having the rush of pre-season and getting used to the games coming and what comes with it. But it’s a chance for me to make sure I know where everything is because unfortunately we’re probably six or seven weeks away from the first manager moving on, for whatever reason, and I need to be ready when my chance comes.