GARETH EVANS today admitted he has been left green with envy following the opening of Hibs' £4.9 million state-of-the-art training centre having spent nine years at Easter Road enduring the most primitive of facilities.
While today's stars – and those of the future – will enjoy a complex which rivals the best in the country, Evans, below, and his team-mates spent their days traipsing between public parks on a daily basis. Three showers to be shared between 20 cold a
nd wet players, squelchy, muddy pitches covered in dog dirt, training on Portobello beach during freeze-ups and team-mates finding themselves lost as sessions were switched at short notice were daily tales.
Now back at Easter Road as reserve team coach, Evans, pictured below, can laugh at the rough-and-ready facilities on offer, claiming he was well prepared for his move to Hibs having spent his time training on a pitch behind a pub with Rotherham United.
It was a world away from the Hibernian Training Centre on the outskirts of Tranent, a development boasting five international sized grass pitches and a similarly proportioned floodlit synthetic pitch, an indoor artificial surface, a fully-equipped gym, massive changing rooms, medical facilities, a hydrotherapy pool and steam room, lounges, a dining room and kitchen.
If boss John Collins believes it surpasses what was on offer when he starred for French outfit AS Monaco and English Premiership sides Everton and Fulham, the centre, created on more than 50 acres of former farm land, is certainly a million miles away from when he and Evans first met at Easter Road in the mid-Eighties.
He said: "When I first came to Hibs we trained at Jock's Lodge where the grass was too long because we shared the ground with a rugby club. We moved on to the Wardie Playing Fields off Granton Road which we thought at the time was fantastic progression and then on to the Moray House Campus at Cramond which was even better.
"But what the club now has on offer surpasses everything – today's players are very fortunate to have such facilities. I have to admit I am very much envious of them although they have to have the same attitude and passion rather than think they are in a comfort zone."
Comfort wasn't a word normally associated with the facilities on offer to Evans and his team-mates, the former striker laughing as he said: "We accepted it for what it was at the time. Of course you got the usual moans you'll get in any workplace but we just got on with things. Sometimes there were only three showers for 20 of us, the toilets weren't the best but what we did have was a spirit about us.
"I'd started my career at Coventry City where they had just sold Ian Wallace to Nottingham Forest for £1 million and spent it on a big training complex. But I stopped off at Rotherham on the way to Edinburgh where we trained behind a pub called The Grapes so I had seen the other side of things and didn't notice a great difference.
"When I arrived here I heard all the horror stories of how it had been, of kit lying on the floor and players just grabbing what they could see, although we had Alex Miller as manager and he was always really organised."
The one thing Miller couldn't organise, of course, was the weather, with winter's icy grip causing problems for Collins and his squad even as the new training centre was being unveiled yesterday.
With pitches frozen, and the training centre closed to them as it was officially opened by club owner Sir Tom Farmer and chairman Rod Petrie, the players were forced to travel across the city to seek indoor facilities only to have a car run into the back of one of their mini-buses, so delaying the manager's appearance for the big moment. Evans said: "It was only a minor bump, no real damage, but we had to exchange insurance details and wait for the police.
"When I was a player we went to Portobello beach when the weather was as it has been this week. Or we would go to the Jack Kane Centre and play five-a-sides, we'd just go wherever we could.
"We'd have days when training was switched at short notice and sometimes you'd find a carload or two of the boys missing because they were being driven by someone who didn't know their way around Edinburgh.
"This was in the days before mobile phones, remember, so you'd have players arriving for training in dribs and drabs.
"It was even worse when you went down the divisions. I moved on to Partick Thistle and Airdrie and remember training on pitches where dogs had been well exercised or they were covered in broken bottles. I saw it as a test of character for players who really wanted it, who had the passion and as far as I was concerned I just looked on myself as fortunate because I was doing something I loved every day."
Today's players will no doubt be reminded, not only by Collins and Evans but by assistant manager Tommy Craig who can also recall tales of yesteryear from his days as player/assistant to John Blackley, of just how lucky they are in comparison. Now, however, Evans sees it as the task of the Hibs coaching staff to make the most of what they have been given.
He said: "I don't think John, Tommy, myself or any of the other guys who played with the club when we did could have foreseen the day when Hibs had such a wonderful facility. The players won't be spoiled by having such a wonderful environment. They'll enjoy it, of course, but they still need that hunger inside. They have everything any player would ever want to improve themselves.
"Players should have the best of facilities. The biggest thing is that players can train in the morning, come in and have a meal, relax by watching television or by playing on the computers or with an old-fashioned game of pool before going back out – in fresh kit.
"What impresses me most is the attention to detail both indoors and outdoors, from the individual lockers in the changing rooms to the fact the five grass pitches are exactly the same size as Easter Road. All the playing staff will be together. At the moment we are in two separate places so it will be good for the younger players to be training alongside the first-team.
"But the biggest bonus, I think, will be in attracting youngsters to the club. No parent will fail to be impressed by what we can offer their son as he begins what, in effect, is his first job."
And for a club which already enjoys the highest of reputations for breeding their own home-grown talent despite the privations endured up until now, that promises to be some bonus.
