DANNY Wilson will give Town’s squad a sneak preview of Wembley on Friday in a bid to calm the nerves of his young stars.
After training in the morning at the County Ground, they will then travel to the capital after lunch to take in the surroundings of the 90,000-seater stadium.
A little over 24 hours later Swindon will walk out alongside Millwall in the League One play-off final with a place in the second tier at stake, and manager Wilson explained their visit is a tactic to make sure no one is overawed.
“We don’t want to get there on Saturday having not seen it, and then everybody be starstruck with it all and have to play a game within a couple of hours,” he said “It’s important that we get there, take in the surroundings and see what we need to see before they actually go on Saturday.
“It means that on the day they can actually concentrate on the game.
“It will still be totally different with 80,000 people or however many will be in there, but we want to make sure they aren’t overawed by anything when it comes to Saturday.”
Wilson has urged his players to enjoy every moment of the build-up to their day in the spotlight, but warned them to remain focused on the task in hand.
“They cannot go on tangents all over the place and get caught out doing all sorts of silly things they wouldn’t normally do in the build-up to a normal game,” he said.
“We will try and keep things on an even keel from the training side of things, the press and things like that. We will keep them away from too much of all that.
“It’s not about keeping it low-key, it’s about enjoying the moment as well.
“This type of game doesn’t come round many times in people’s careers, maybe only once in some cases.
“They’ve got to remember that and enjoy it, but I would like to think that the enjoyment comes at the end of the day when the performance is put in.
“Whether it is a winning performance, I don’t know, but they can’t have any regrets.
“And certainly they don’t want any regrets wishing their build-up was better and that they hadn’t been affected during key moments of their preparation.
“You have to enjoy it and go out there with a smile on your face.
“You can’t be scared to death of playing football and shaking like a leaf. These are the times that you come into football for – they are exciting times.
“But they have to prepare themselves how they would for a very big game, and there’s no bigger than this one coming up.”
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