Brown stays busy despite call-offs

Up and down the country players have been forced to do the best they can to maintain peak fitness as the Arctic weather has played havoc with their training schedules. For most it has meant a trip to their local gym as snowbound roads made travelling impossible, some finding they couldn't even venture beyond the end of their street – a situation which, of course, confronted hundreds of thousands of others.

But Hibs goalkeeper Mark Brown possibly hit on the most novel of fitness regimes as he answered an emergency call after his sister-in-law suffered a suspected broken ankle as she slipped on an icy pavement.

As she waited for an ambulance, Brown jogged the three miles to collect his young nieces, five-year-old Ellie and Madison, who is almost two, hauling them home on a sledge in an uphill journey that took him an hour-and-a-half.

Brown said: "It was probably the strangest training session I've ever had. Lorraine slipped outside Ellie's school on Monday afternoon and thought she'd broken her ankle.

"Thankfully it was only sprained but while she waited for the ambulance I jogged the three miles and then pulled the kids back on a sledge which helped keep me ticking over."

Such were the conditions – his mother Jacqueline found herself trapped for hours on the motorway as she attempted to drive to work.

Brown was unable to make it to Hibs East Mains Training Centre on the outskirts of Tranent until yesterday and even then he and team-mates John Rankin and Kevin McBride found a journey which normally takes them around 50 minutes taking more than two hours.

Having endured such conditions, Brown admitted he was in full agreement with safety taking priority over football with last weekend's entire SPL programme cancelled and three of tomorrow's matches - including Hibs' trip to Hamilton - being postponed.

While admitting it was frustrating to have matches called off due to treacherous conditions around grounds although pitches have, in the main, remained playable thanks to undersoil heating, Brown said: "All it would take would be one incident and people would be asking if it was really worthwhile just for a game of football.

"When the roads and so on are so bad it's surely better to wait until later in the season. Supporters' safety has to be the greatest concern. Of course, as players, we want the games to be played but can we really be selfish and say they must be played?"

Although he spent four-and-a-half years with Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Brown insisted this week's weather is the worst he can remember. He said: "To be honest, Inverness was okay. The snow gates on the A9 might have been closed once or twice but because Inverness is right down at sea level I think I only saw snow once or twice in all the time I was up there."

Having finally made it to East Mains yesterday, Brown joined his team-mates in training indoors but he admitted that, as much as the artificial surface was appreciated, nothing quite matches working on grass.

He said: "I'd kept myself ticking over by walking to a gym about 25 minutes away from my house, but it's not ideal. You can do as much running as you like, but it's all about match fitness. As a goalkeeper you want to be getting that ball in your hands. We got a good training session in the 'barn' at East Mains but while the surface is good, it's a bit slower than grass and when you get outside onto grass the bounce of the ball is different.

"But you have to get on with things, it's been the same up and down the country. In fact, I bumped into the Hamilton squad in the gym when I was out working by myself on Wednesday."