Davies Says Rams Can Benefit From Tenerife Trip

Curtis Davies is convinced that Derby County’s players will only benefit from their week-long training camp in Tenerife.

The Rams flew out to their base in the Canary Islands yesterday as part of their preparations for the 2017/18 season and will undertake their first training session this morning.

Davies, 32, joined Derby from Hull City earlier in the summer and he feels the trip abroad will present an opportunity to further integrate himself into the squad.

The experienced defender admits he’s well aware that an intense week of work lies in wait in the heat, just a few days after reporting back for pre-season.

He told RamsTV: “If you are asking me if I am looking forward to it; it would maybe be a bit of yes and no!

“It will be good to do a bit of team bonding out there with the squad.

“The weather will be hotter than it is at home so we need to be ready to run, that’s when it’s tough.

“We know it needs to be done to get us fit and ready for the start of the season.”

The weather in Tenerife will be a far cry from the wet Derbyshire weather that greeted the players on Thursday when they kicked off their pre-season workload.

Davies, however, says the players certainly weren’t complaining as manager Gary Rowett quickly put his squad through their paces.

He said: “We were delighted to come back to such poor weather – it’s normally about 90 degrees when pre-season starts!

“Normally you aren’t looking forward to running in the heat on the first day, so it was great to see it raining and it certainly helped.

“It was more helpful on the blisters to be honest and the footballs were out from the first session, which was nice to see.”

Davies opted to join Derby in June after a four-year stint at Hull.

With a fresh challenge ahead of him, he’s relishing the prospect of kicking off the next chapter of his career with the Rams.

He said: “I feel like I’ve eased myself in quite well. It’s exciting to start at a new club, I said on Twitter that it was like being the new kid at school.

“Now I am here, it’s good to see the players and also the fantastic facilities – which I saw briefly when I signed.

“We have a fantastic complex, it’s a proper Premier League club in terms of how we are set up – so it’s over to us to go and make it happen for real.

“We hope to have a real push this year as the manager builds the squad for how he wants to play.”