In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks at the pre-season trip to Australia, whilst discussing the upcoming season.
Howe is the author of two books on the club, ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ - which has been updated as a new version for 2021 - and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.
Whether you are a new player, an established player or an emerging player, it never hurts to be exposed to the enormity of what it means to play for Leeds United. And if Jesse Marsch achieved nothing else during a fortnight in Australia, he will have seen his players develop a much deeper attachment with the club they represent. Whether it was at the games themselves, at open training sessions, in a hotel lobby or in a hall full of beery Leeds fans, the players will return from Down Under fully indoctrinated in the concept that Leeds United matters.
This is a summer of profound change at Leeds United, and while some people might question the logic of flying 10,244 miles to the other side of the world to help manage that change, the squad, the team spirit and the collective sense of perspective will come back all the better for it.
A pre-season tour to a distant clime is the closest the players will get to that amplified sense of pride that fans feel on away days, when they land on enemy soil and puff their chests out even further and sing even louder, because they have to. For youngsters like Joffy Gelhardt, Australia was also unfamiliar territory, and with that comes an even stronger affection for the shirt, particularly when that warmth is reciprocated in an unforeseen way by hordes of the most remote Leeds fans you will ever stumble across.
And to think, 10 years ago Leeds United’s budding starlets had the pleasure of travelling to the distant climate of Cornwall in pre-season under Neil Warnock. The merits of playing local non-league sides just because it was convenient to our incumbent manager’s summer staycation plans, can perhaps be reflected in our league standing that season. Although as bonding exercises go, a barbecue in Warnock’s back garden is not a social event you’re ever likely to forget, and if an ex-players’ WhatsApp group doesn’t still exist to honour that occasion, it probably should do.
It’s fair to say we have come a long way in a decade, even if a barbecue was no doubt also on the agenda on this 2022 pre-season tour. And, even if it’s winter at the moment, a beach barbecue to the soundtrack of the rolling Aussie surf is a much more enticing prospect. I can imagine Rasmus Kristensen was the hunter-gatherer going out to “catch something for dinner” with his bare hands, while Mateusz Klich brought the tunes and Pat Bamford did the cooking, ably supported by his sous chef Ilan Meslier casually marinating some tuna steaks while playing Uno with Kristoffer Klaesson.
The downtime and travelling time can be just as important as the games and training on these kind of trips, and the Leeds players certainly did their bit on the PR front in meeting fans and civic dignitaries and sampling the local culture. Given the injury woes we experienced last season, we should for once be thankful for the officious red tape of health and safety law, which hopefully insisted a risk assessment was carried out before the lads went surfing on the Gold Coast. Thankfully they were restricted to shallow waters and pretty timid waves, but my mind was immediately alerted to those injury roll calls you read in the papers or online, and which could otherwise now be listing Luke Ayling (knee), Stuart Dallas (fractured femur) and Pascal Struijk (leg bitten off by shark) as our absentees.
On the pitch, of course, Jesse Marsch will have made huge strides on the tour in understanding what his new squad is capable of and the shape, dynamic and forensic detail of how the team will play will be much better ingrained in the players themselves. While pre-season games are always horribly disjointed affairs hampered by fitness, pattern and substitutions, they retain a fascination for fans starved of their football rush and eager to discover the merest hint of revelation in the skills of new signings, and established players who might just have made significant improvements in the off-season.
We certainly saw that in the promising performances of Rasmus Kristensen, Tyler Adams, Marc Roca and Brenden Aaronson in the three games against Brisbane Roar, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, Meslier showed he is STILL incredible, Robin Koch suggested he probably is the international-class centre half we always hoped he would be and Gelhardt offered a firm indication that he’s going to gate-crash this Premier League season like a wrecking ball.
And while the players have now swapped the rain and subdued temperatures of an Australian winter for…erm… much the same in an English summer - having conveniently missed the outrageous heatwave we experienced – Thorp Arch will be buzzing once more this week as the absent players catch up with events in Oz, and the hard work continues in the lead-up to the Cagliari friendly this Sunday and the first Premier League game against Wolves the following weekend.
While major change is ongoing at Leeds United, there are still the likes of Luke Ayling and Stuart Dallas around to thread it all together, and having the whole group assembled for the next 10 days will be precious time to forge a siege mentality for the new season. And there may yet be new additions to the squad also, because we are desperately missing that steady stream of LUTV videos featuring the relentless backslapping of a new signing being welcomed to the club by one and all.
There is a freshness to Leeds United and a rude health, though also a sense of a new coat of paint that will take time to feel normal, but which we know we will quickly grow to love. And with new players, come new characters. So I’m sure there will be effervescence and charisma from Roca, Aaronson, Adams, Luis Sinisterra, Darko Gyabi and I’ve got high hopes for Rasmus Kristensen reviving some form of anarchic Tunnel Cam feature on LUTV this season. And while players like Gelhardt and Sam Greenwood find their feet in the first team, their confidence and personality grows and they become a part of the furniture, and a part that we increasingly value.
Change brings new characters and characters sometimes take time to grow and emerge into something we are fond of, but they always do. We play all the way for Leeds United, and it’s a story that never ends. But with each new instalment we need new characters, otherwise there’s no romance, and the story gets tired and predictable. And where’s the fun in that?