Lee Bowyer took his Charlton team paintballing on Monday as part of a team-bonding exercise.
He explained “It was my idea, because I think it’s good to sometimes step away from the training ground to get that team bonding and have a laugh. I think it’s important. It’s a long season
“They had a good laugh, and that’s part of it. Obviously, their main training is on the football pitch, but we did that on Tuesday and Tuesday is a tough day. Today, the real focus is on Luton (Saturday’s opponent) and how we’re going to go about tackling them, but Monday is a bit of a ‘down’ day, so I thought that was a good opportunity to go away from here (the training ground) and have a bit of a laugh. It’s just team bonding really.”
When asked if any of the players took the opportunity to have a shot at their manager Bowyer responded with a smile: “Yeah, a few of them did, but that’s part of it. Someone shot me on my backside from point blank! I don’t know who it was. I think (Darren) Pratley got me in the back and he was on my team! I saw him chuckling.”
Spirits are high in the camp on the back of four consecutive wins and the Charlton manager added with a laugh: “He (Pratley) won’t be involved on Saturday. No, it’s all good fun. Everyone has little pops at someone at some stage, and the last game was a big free-for-all, with everyone shooting against everyone. It was a good laugh. I think the players enjoyed it. It was like a warm-down session, really, because it was quite tiring! It was more tiring than I thought it was going to be. It was a good day and mixing the players and the staff together was also important, I think.”
Watch the video below.