By Duncan Wood
July 8 2002

The two new signings, Scott Morgan and Peter Richards, will join their new team mates for the start of preseason training today. It'll give Mark Bennett the chance to see who has been taking it easy in the last couple of weeks!

Mark, as you will probably all remember, was the Bristol captain during the promotion winning season in 1998-9. He led from the front and was the only player to appear in every single league game.

Unfortunately, in the course of that season, he picked up a serious eye injury and had to retire from playing after advice from the Bristol Eye Hospital.

Since that time, he has been the Bristol fitness coach and can often be seen on matchdays conducting the warm downs and training for the guys on the bench who didn't feature in the match action.

Some of his preseason methods have become the stuff of legend particularly the jaunts over the Severn Bridge into Wales. Mark's a South Wales boy and he knows the terrain pretty well, and the terrain doesn't come any tougher than at Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend.

Now I actually lived for a short while near Bridgend so I'm fairly well qualified to talk about the area. Basically, Merthyr Mawr is a series of sand dunes and provides an ideal testing ground for Benny to put the squad through their paces.

Besides the usual sprinting up and down the dunes, I've heard tails of team members having to drag heavy weights behind them in a form of team relay race. It's tough training and sorts out the men from the boys!

It says it all really that when Scott Morgan was asked last week who he was looking forward to seeing again at Bristol, he turned the question around. He wasn't looking forward to seeing Benny at preseason training.

Nuff said!