Hayman excited and humbled by captain chance

Jun 25 2009 by Nick Purewal, The Journal

Humbled by his first ever captaincy role, Newcastle Falcons’ new skipper Carl Hayman told Nick Purewal lifting weights and building bonds will dominate the next month

“And that makes this all the more exciting for me.”

Aware the past always shapes the future, Hayman believes the much-changed Falcons squad can prove a blessing in disguise at Kingston Park.

Unmoved by the terminology of team-building, Hayman understands its importance, and vowed to balance forging friendships with more standard pre-season pursuits like pushing tin.

“There’s a lot of new guys coming in,” Hayman said, “and that gives us a chance to mould ourselves in whichever way suits us best.

“Past performances and preconceptions don’t mean anything now, the new guys especially won’t be too aware of all that. So we can quickly come to a vision of where we want to go, and I find that exciting.

“For me the first thing to do will be to get round the guys and get to know them.

“I think before you work with someone you need to build a relationship with them, and that’s not just key for me but for all the players.

“We’ll structure our training appropriately so that we can get round and do some team-building exercises.

“Team building’s quite vague but it’s more about getting to know everyone, what makes them tick and that sort of thing.

“It’s important that we do a lot of work on that early on, but then also we have to keep going with that – because it’s not an overnight process.”