Changing room chat: ‘Holiday’ snaps embarass Caldwell

Published on 13/02/2013 01:42

WHEN football clubs go away to foreign climes for ‘warm weather training’, it’s hard not to imagine highly-paid players simply lounging around the pool topping up their fake tans.

And it has certainly not been hard to imagine this week after pictures of the Wigan squad lying around the pool of their Tenerife hotel were posted on Twitter. Yesterday, Latics captain Gary Caldwell felt compelled to release a statement to assure supporters that the trip is not just a jolly.

“Like many other teams at this time of year, we have travelled abroad to undergo a warm weather training camp,” said the Scot. “We are training twice a day in the heat and the squad is really being put through its paces, more so than we probably could have done at home, judging by the temperatures back there.

“Obviously, you need your downtime, but we realise that one or two pictures of players lying by the pool that appeared on Twitter may have came across as disrespectful to our supporters, and so we have decided ourselves as a group to take them down to avoid confusion.”

Caldwell, whose team are second bottom of the table, added: “I can assure each and every one of our fans that the players are totally committed and focused on the fight to keep our club in the Premier League.”

. . .that’s what you call a grudge game

CROATIA’S grudge clash with Serbia in Scotland’s World Cup group will have 3,000 police at the ground – almost one for every ten fans. The nations – at war in the 1990s will face each other in Zagreb next month on the night Scotland face Wales at Hampden. No away fans will be allowed but tension has reached boiling point, especially after Croatia manager Igor Stimac suggested the match should be kicked off by two Croatian Army generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac, who were acquitted at a war crimes trial last year.

Vergeer ends her 700-win career

One of the most dominant records in sport came to an unblemished conclusion when Dutch wheelchair tennis player Esther Vergeer hung up her racket after an unbeaten decade yesterday.

The 31-year-old, who claimed four Paralympic singles gold medals and three in doubles, won 470 consecutive matches and 120 successive tournaments, dropping only 18 sets during that time. Her career record stands at 700 wins and 25

defeats. Vergeer rose to world No 1 in 1999 and remained there ever since.