Milan Nový

“And then I received number six. This is what helps you most. I was seventeen then. Bohuš Prošel put me with these forwards. Had I been poor they would have asked for another centre forward after two matches. I started in January and we played against Košice. We won eight nil. I scored a goal and had two assists. The famous Jiří Holeček was the goalkeeper. And I kept working on myself so I managed to maintain that position.”

“The game was rough then, very physical. Take Jarda Šíma, for instance, he could be really rough. But when you are trained you are careful or are one step quicker. Your body responds like you know. But you need to have a trained body first. It was not like we had our trainings for ninety minutes. I worked in the afternoon, when we had our free time. I had no free time, I didn’t relax. On Saturdays I had my individual training, on Sundays we had a training in Kladno and before that I was running in a forest because the training did not start until half past eight. And this may have been the reason why injuries evaded me.”