Tales From The Training Ground: Whitecaps first open training session a huge success

Vancouver Whitecaps returned to training today after five days off following their loss to Real Salt Lake last Friday.

In what will hopefully become at least an annual occurrence, Thursday saw the Caps hold their first open training session for 500 fans at Swangard Stadium.

Admittedly most of the Whitecaps training sessions are already open to the public if you know where to go, but today's event was a special interactive session sponsored by Sport Chek and MC'd by club ambassador Carl Valentine.

[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

It was a mix of Southsiders, general fans and a lot of families at the specially ticketed event and those in attendance, including the players and management, marked it down as a huge success, with fans having the chance to train alongside the players at times and take part in a number of festivities to win prizes including scarves, balls and video games.

One of the first activities of the day were some special relay contests led by team captains Alain Rochat, Jordan Harvey, Paul Ritchie and Jay DeMerit, along with a chosen fan for each team.

Passing drills were next, first square and then two man crossing drills on each net, with fans cheering on their allocated side's goals scored.

Then came an 11 v 11 intrasquad game, with one of the biggest cheers of the morning coming when Kenny Miller rounded Joe Cannon to score the only goal of the game. Let's hope we see a few more from the Scotsman next weekend.

A mini game followed for half the squad, whilst those starting the Reserve game at Chivas on Friday took part in stretching exercises.

Then it was time for youth to take centre stage as Russell Teibert, Michael Nanchoff and Greg Klazura showed off their ball juggling skills with some fans.

At the end of training fans were brought on to the pitch and joined the team on a run around the pitch to cool down. That's a phrase I've never understood in my out of shape state!

Martin Rennie addressed the fans a couple of times over the morning and Rick Celebrini talked about fitness, whilst Carl Valentine kept the festivities moving along at a fine and fun pace, as players mingled and signed autographs.

I'm used to Club open days back in Scotland, which were always great fun, and the Vancouver Canucks have done open practices for years now.

Although I'm not a huge Canucks fan, I've gone along most years and enjoyed it, but you never feel as close to the action and the players as with what the Whitecaps put on today.

It's something we've mentioned before here on AFTN. Football fans in this city are lucky because we get to feel closer to our sporting heroes than fans of the Canucks and Lions and the players respond in kind.

Let's hope there's a few more of these community events to come from the Caps. Based on the success of today, it seems like the sensible thing to do.

There's some more photos from the training session below and you can view all of Christopher Vose's photos of the event <a href="