Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
It’s been about seventeen years since the women’s team played, but luckily Jepson is fully on top of things.
It’s been (roughly) seventeen quarantine years since Liverpool Women played a game. And that’s only partly because of Covid-19 and enforced quarantine. Still, it’s long enough (and Liverpool Women are actually observing physical distancing protocols unlike other teams) that manager, Vicky Jepson has got a lot of things to say about what the team is doing to stay mentally and physically fit.
“We are just keeping ourselves occupied, staying safe indoors, which is important we all do, but we’ve got to look after each other as well while we are away from the training ground.” Jepson told the club’s official website. “We’ve had plenty of Zoom calls, we have regular staff meetings, there has been some fun quizzes that the staff have run for the girls to keep involved in on Zoom. It’s just important that the girls keep on top of their physical performance plan, the staff keep checking on the players regularly but more importantly that we stay inside until it’s safe to go back out again.”
“The training programme [that we’re following] has changed a few times with information from the government and from the league, so as a staffing group we have to be on our toes and be adaptable the second we get new communications,” she added.
“We have to make sure that we are doing all we can and we are across all communications to make sure the players are in the best physical place as possible, so we have regular communications as a staffing group on that to make sure we get the programmes out to the players. We’ve sent resistant bands out to the players, skipping ropes and exercise bikes. They are all doing lots of running on an app called Strava so we can monitor how far they run, how quick they run. We’ve done live yoga sessions with our physio, Hina Chauhan, which has been great for the players to join in. I’m not very good and flexible at that but I still give it a little bit of a go! In our staffing group we play quizzes together and all sorts of things like that to keep us smiling and keep us ticking.”
It goes without saying that everything Jepson has described is the absolute bare minimum that you’d expect any club to provide to its players, but it’s good to hear that Liverpool is at least doing something for its women’s team (yes, that’s exactly how low the bar is).
Watch the full interview with Jepson at LiverpooolFC.com.
