There was a time, unlike now with squads being assembled at the last minute, when it was not if but where Swindon’s pre-season tour would be. Until the 60s, pre-season had just been a case of turning up on the appointed day and spending a couple of weeks running up and down the terraces, followed by a Probables v Possibles match on the Saturday before the season began.
The change began when Bert Head persuaded the Swindon directors to invest £300 taking the team for a week under canvas at Weymouth. His idea was that not only would it help get the team fit, but it would build a sense of togetherness. It certainly seems to have worked as not only did the team win promotion at the end of the season, but friendships were built which have lasted to this day. The Club Minute Book reveals that the trip went £50 over budget, but £20 of this was recouped from two £10 fines. There is no indication as to what the fines were for, Don Rogers suspects it was for punctuality. Apparently, while the players were free to go out on the town in the evening, there was a strict 10.30 pm curfew, and Bert would be waiting for the players’ return, stopwatch in hand.
A halfway house between this and a foreign tour came when Bobby Smith was manager. The team did not cross the channel for a pre-season tour but headed North to Scotland for a pre-match tour in 1979. Despite being without the injured Billy Tucker, Swindon began the tour with a 1-0 victory over Forfar Athletic. The biggest winner was right-winger Ian Miller’s dad. He came to watch his son play and won £50 in a local lottery.
The second match of the tour saw a similar result against Morton, but a much-improved performance. It was the aforementioned Miller who set up the Town’s goal in the 16th minute with “Handy” Andy Rowland getting between two defenders to slam home the right winger’s cross.
The final game was against Clyde and showed one of the benefits of pre-season matches in enabling a manager to experiment with a different formation. For this match, Paul Gilchrist and Rowland were left up front in a 4-4-2 formation. Ray McHale hit a 25-yard thunderbolt to put Town in front, and when Brian Williams added a second early in the second half, Town looked to be cruising, only for two goals in four minutes to prevent them from returning from the tour with a 100 per cent record.
The pre-season tour to Holland in 1991 was one of the most successful in the club’s history. Glenn Hoddle’s team were up against teams that would be playing in European competitions during the coming season and still came out on top. A semi-final contest against UEFA Cup qualifiers FC Groningen saw Town emerge victorious through Dave Mitchell’s goal. Said the Aussie marksman: “We are a good footballing side and have shown that by matching some of the best teams in Europe. And in a sense, we have beaten them at their own game, adopting a European style and using a sweeper system.”
Town‘s win in the final, which meant they brought home the Borsele Trophy, was against Vitesse Arnhem. It had something of a fairy tale ending as the game appeared to be heading for extra time when Steve Foley came off the bench to get Town’s winner. “I was supposed to go to Lilleshall for treatment, but decided to come here instead and try to run through the pain.” The goal itself was a cracker, which must have delighted the estimated 150 Town fans who had made a trip to Holland for their Summer holiday.
In 1996, during the reign of Steve McMahon, a more adventurous trip to Finland took place. It did not start well either for the Adver Reporter, John Cross, who was fined £5 because of his dress, or for physio, Jonathan Trigg, who suddenly found he had his girlfriend’s passport as he was about to go through customs. On the pitch, it was a different story as RIPS were demolished 9-0 with Mark Walters having a starring role.
Apparently, at the time, there was a higher rate of alcoholism in Finland than in most countries, and Swindon seemed to have adopted the motto “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” with each match being followed by a small party. It did not seem to have damaged Town’s performances as, apart from a 1-1 draw against Kings FC, the three other matches were won.
All the matches were followed by a small party, and with director Peter Godwin on the trip, karaoke was often involved. It is believed that it was on this trip that the hunting knives, which are in the Trophy cabinet at the County Ground, were acquired, but no one is exactly sure where.
Perhaps the best documented of all Swindon’s pre-season tours was the trip to Italy in 2011. Paolo Di Canio was in charge, and if the tour began with a light training session, it was only because the temperature that day was well over 35 degrees until well after nine at night, after which salami, bread and pasta were washed down with several beers. Based at Lake Garda, Di Canio did a lot of sessions on the training ground there.
Reading through the tour diaries, one does see shades of Ian Holloway, talking about walking the team through moves in the way that Di Canio had the ball being played around static defenders.
Another comparison was the first tour match, which was an 11-0 victory over a “Norcia Select XI”, which was a tactic of the Hungarians in the early fifties, who twice thrashed England, playing local factory teams to build confidence and get strikers used to handling scoring opportunities.
