Derby County Head Coach Paul Warne is looking forward to Friday night's test against Portsmouth in Sky Bet League One (8pm kick-off).
The Rams go into the game one place behind Pompey in the table and Warne knows that the match can provide a real marker for where the side is that.
Speaking to RamsTV prior to the contest, he spoke about current energy levels within the camp, giving younger players opportunities and the trip to Fratton Park in front of the Sky Sports cameras.
On having experienced players around the group…
I think it’s good when players take coaching courses like Conor Hourihane; I wish I’d have taken mine younger in my career.
The players spend more time with each other than we do, so the more people that you have in the building that have a good understanding of the game that can help the younger players the better. You want the people that have a love for the game, study it and do extra gym work.
With Conor doing his coaching badges, I’ll look forward to him putting a session on!
On building a culture and giving players mugs for scoring goals…
There’s no right or wrong, this is just how I like a football club to be. The mugs are just a little thing. I can walk past someone in the refectory who’s got a paper cup and I can have a go at them for not helping the environment and not scoring any goals! It just adds to the banter and the fun of the place.
You just want the lads to enjoy being here because if they are here and whatever job they are in, you just want people to enjoy coming to work. If they are coming in because they want to win a £6 mug, then great.
On energy levels in camp…
I think for the lads it’s not as bad as the coaches, as crazy as that sounds.
When they leave here they can kind of disengage their games a bit whereas we can’t, we’re preparing for the next one all the time.
The Birdy’s and the younger players, playing a match every three or four days, doesn’t really touch the sides for them. It may be a little different for the older guard.
It’s not 'woe is me', but it is a lot of travelling. The fans who are kindly making the effort, they will feel exhausted when they go into work the next day too. It’s just a disruption of sleep, it’s not so much the games or the preparation.
On Portsmouth…
I’ve played against them many times, it hasn’t been a hugely popular place for me to go. We’ve watched loads of their matches and they’ll see all of our details too. They are great on the ball.
This game is similar to the Ipswich one a month ago. It’s a very difficult place to go to. I took a team there last year with Rotherham that were flying and we got a right good crack and lost.
It will be a good test, they’ll want to do well against us with it being two big teams, two big clubs with a lot of history but it just comes down to 22 lads at the pitch at any one time.
Hopefully we’ll have enough to cause them some problems, they will cause us some. We’ll know more about us as a group and more about where we need to strengthen come 11pm on Friday.
On bringing young players like Jake Rooney into the team…
We could have played a different system at MK Dons. It would be easy to not play younger players, not just Jake Rooney but anyone.
I watched him train, he trained well last week and on Thursday he was the outstanding performer. In the end, you just have to let your brain comprehend what it has seen. Don’t worry about the name on his back, did he do what you asked him to do? Yes, then great.
The difficulty for the younger lads is back-to-back-to-back. It’s the emotional drain that does them, not the physicality.
Sometimes you just need an opportunity and you need to grab it and Jake has done really well. However, there’s the Curtis Davies’ and the James Chester’s all chomping at the bit to get back in and it’s his job to keep his shirt.
