Wellington Phoenix General Manager David Dome discusses how the club’s access to NZCIS has helped provide a competitive advantage in their 2023-24 A-League Men’s report.
By David Dome
NZCIS is a world-class high-performance facility which allows our teams to assemble, train, and recover in new ways. We believe that there are performance advantages for our teams: to have both indoor and outdoor fields, gym, recovery pools, medical facilities, team rooms and dining areas in such a condensed environment allows teams to win the transitions between different aspects of the week, whether it’s team meetings, training or recovery.
Precious time is gained and that can be the one percent that makes the difference on game day.
We have used visuals of the unit as part of the club’s proposition to new players and of course existing players find it tempting to re-sign with us compared to other training facilities they would otherwise endure. Feedback from international players – some of them have played at the very highest level in leagues overseas – is that our training facility easily surpasses club facilities and most international team training facilities as well.
Read more extracts from our 2023-24 A-League Men’s report
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We also are confident that the facilities we offer enable a significantly reduced return to play timeframe given the access to the technology available.
The impact of a facility such as NZCIS cannot be underestimated. It has elevated levels of professionalism across the club – both on and off the field. No doubt having access to resources that enable world class performance and monitoring, the mental boost from training and working in a true high-performance environment along with athletes of similar persuasion has been immense. Cross code collaboration has enabled the sharing of ideas and best practice which has further enabled team performance.
