Personal fitness regime keeps Curran on the ball

Aug 1 2007 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE was never any possibility of Craig Curran resting on his laurels after making a spectacular arrival on the first-team scene with Tranmere Rovers a few months ago.

Far from sitting back and enjoying a break from the demands of professional football – and enjoying the still-fresh memories of goals and glory in the final month of last season – the young striker chose to carry on working through the summer.

Curran switched to his own training regime after the 2006/07 campaign ended, pushing himself through runs and exercises to keep fitness levels high.

It is a measure of the 17-year-old’s determination to make himself a success in the professional game that he has been following a similar formula since his days in the schools of excellence at Blackburn and then Tranmere.

Curran explained: “I have my own routine every summer so when the squad stops training in May, I carry on working.

“The only time I have a break is when I’m actually away on holiday. Those are the two weeks when I put my feet up and give my body a rest.

“Otherwise I’m in the gym or doing my running. I have been doing it this way since I was 13 or 14 because I always want to come back for the start of pre-season training in the best possible shape.”

Curran believes he is growing into a modern game that makes greater physical demands on players than ever before.

He said: “I think I have to push myself as hard as I can because the game now is full of athletes, high-stamina players.

“If you do want to be up there with the best you have to work and train as hard as they do.”

Even so, the hours of sweat and toil would be so much harder to sustain without the golden moments of reward of the kind Curran enjoyed in the spring.

There was a match-turning goal with the first touch of his home debut against Brighton at the end of April and the first-half hat-trick against Brentford in the final game of Tranmere’s League One season at Prenton Park.

Curran confesses: “I did not want last season to end and then I could not wait for the new one to start. It was fairytale stuff and I did not think things like that could happen to me.

“It is amazing to look back but I don’t dwell on it. It has not settled in because in football you have to be thinking about the next match or the next training session.

“I have to be professional and remember it was only a couple of games. There will be a lot more games I have to impress in if I want to get on.”

Curran’s first target is to impress manager Ronnie Moore sufficiently over the pre-season programme to earn a place in the side for Tranmere’s opening League One encounter with Leeds United on Saturday, August 11. A clutch of goals in the summer friendlies, including the winner at Altrincham on Monday night, have done his cause no harm.

The longer term aim is to graduate from breakthrough player to become a regular in the first-team frame during the new campaign.

Curran will face strong competition for the first-team striking role from Chris Greenacre, Tranmere’s leading marksman for the last two seasons, the experienced Gareth Taylor and the tall and powerful Calvin Zola.

Curran looks to be developing as a predatory striker, along the lines of Greenacre.

He says: “I try to learn things every day and not to get ahead of myself. I don’t enjoy anything as much as playing up front. Scoring goals is what I want to do.”