Hull City's first team squad and coaching staff have arrived back on British soil after five days of warm weather training in Dubai. Now, this was something the chairman happily shelled out for, as he did last season, and we'll all be hoping that a five-day training and leisure schedule in the UAE has the same effect as the much longer break did last season.
The Tigers' rather limp exit from the FA Cup in the third round at Plymouth Argyle last year created a 17-day gap between matches. City followed that Cup exit by losing at home to West Bromwich Albion at the KC, then exploiting the yawning chasm of inactivity ahead by jetting away. Though many factors contributed to the Tigers' eventual elevation to the Premier League - belief, fitness, ability, fortune - the fact that they suddenly looked unbeatable after a long break in the sun was not coincidental. The defeat to West Bromwich Albion was the last at the KC that season.
This time, no such gap exists due to City's continued involvement in the FA Cup, something which we usually tend to see as often as Halley's comet. However, with the snow due and lethargy beginning to show its beastly self within a poor run of defeats, City booked their flights for their bit of middle eastern paradise and headed for the departure lounge fewer than 24 hours after drawing at Chelsea.
It's still to be seen whether a mere five days of warm weather training can have the same effect as the much longer period that City enjoyed last season. But it can't do any harm and seems to have been impeccably timed, given that the few inches of snow we've endured round these parts this week would have curtailed and maybe even prevented proper training sessions. City's squad will have trained hard and rested even harder in their luxurious surroundings this week, and the effect of this will hopefully be obvious when they take to the field at Bramall Lane this weekend.
Warm weather training is rather scorned by the more cynical, pessimistic observers of modern-day football, but Paul Duffen and Phil Brown, by financing and organising the jaunt respectively, will have made sure the players have benefitted professionally as well as personally. Last season's break did wonders for the squad's spirit, togetherness, ambition and focus, as well as fitness, and with supposedly a good number of Hull City exiles in Dubai these days, the public image of the club will have taken a shot in the arm too.
It shows how far we've come too. The Hull City squad of 1971 which was the last to win an FA Cup fifth round tie talks fondly to this day of Cliff Britton and Terry Neill taking them to the same hotel in Scarborough before each round. If the City of 2009 gets to the quarters or even beyond, it could cost the chairman quite a wedge. However, as Duffen is the chairman who said after the play-off final that he wants to make Wembley a home for Hull City, he'll certainly believe it'd be worth it.
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