Wales's Six Nations preparations are under way on Poland's snowy Baltic coast as the squad seeks gain through pain
Welcome to Gdansk, the port on Poland's Baltic coast and home of Solidarity, Lech Walesa and life with the windows wide open, even at -11C. I wouldn't mind coming back in the summer, when the mercury sometimes nudges the 30C mark in July and August.
Yesterday it snowed, which meant we couldn't get out and play, but that might be a good thing. Some of these guys have had a lot of rugby already this season and the injury list is beginning to suggest that the game's gods may not be smiling our way.
As the Irish might say, we need the rub of the green. But I'll come to that.
For the moment, Wales will be going to Dublin for the opening of the Six Nations without Gethin Jenkins, a world-class player, and Rhys Priestland, whose arrival in Welsh ranks created the midfield space which helped us to play the way we did at the World Cup. Both have knee problems and when you add the doubts about Dan Lydiate ? somebody stood on his already damaged ankle ? it becomes easy to get hung up on the perceived injustice of it all.
Gethin, may also be missing for the Scotland game in Cardiff, the second week, and you curse those Sunday Heineken games which always seem to bring with them a rash of injuries. It's obviously irrational to suggest that more players get hurt on Sundays than Fridays or Saturdays, but those late games do eat into the time needed to prepare the team for internationals and it was an interesting note when someone pointed out that all the Irish regions were done and dusted by Saturday night.
The fact that two of the Welsh regions were involved in Sunday games was obviously just a quirk of fate. Nothing more than a coincidence. But then one of those guys who is usually spot-on with his facts and figures pointed out that no Irish province has had that Sunday fixture for the past three seasons.
Coincidence? Absolutely. But then the man with all the facts at his fingertips really does turn conspiracy theorist, pointing out that the Irish tend to have a habit of being similarly lucky with their Six Nations schedules. Five times since 2005 they have played Italy on the opening day, he says.
Forget it, you say, the Irish don't need any extra help.
And they don't. Judging by the way their provinces have gone in the Heineken cup so far ? Leinster thumping Bath, Ulster drubbing Leicester and Munster taking Northampton apart in the second half last Saturday ? they are already hot favourites.
When you add Ulster's near Test-level performance against Clermont you say Ireland don't need that rub of the green. However, when you are a long way from home and the mercury in the thermometer is about as reluctant to show its face as we are to expose our players to rugby in the white stuff ?
It wasn't like this when we arrived on Sunday, having left behind those Cardiff Blues and Ospreys players involved in Heineken pool matches against M�tro and Biarritz. The temperature then was much as it had been when we left home, and Gdansk seemed more welcoming ? if still a long way on the spartan side of five-star ? than the Olympic cryotherapy centre at Spala where we prepared for the World Cup.
Spala could be a pretty savage experience and the last time I tried the cryogenic chambers there I emerged unable to see after spending a few minutes at something between -120C and -160C. Here the guys have a couple of sessions in the cabinets in a day which starts at 6am and doesn't end until 8.30 at night. In between there's a medical screening at 6.30am, weights starting in the gym at 7.00am, one training session and one skills session, and a much-needed nap in the afternoon.
The guys get three big meals a day, but the team room always has plenty of snacks and drinks on hand to replace the energy being burned off. And I do mean burned. It's more difficult keeping weight on the players than taking it off, and their collective body heat is why, even at -11C and falling, the windows in the gym stay open.
No gain without pain? Well I don't know any of the squad that went to the World Cup to make up one of the better-prepared sides who would argue it wasn't worth it.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/26/wales-six-nations-shaun-edwards
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