Throughout our Asia-Pacific Tour, we had a Q&A section in our popular Diary Room feature, providing insights into the players’ lives both on and off the pitch.
We prepared five sets of questions, with 10 questions in each, covering various subjects from the Tour itself to ‘Life’ and ‘Pot Luck’.
This week, we’re sharing the answers of Oliver Skipp…
Tour
Q: If you could have sat next to anyone on our flight to Perth, who would it have been?
Oliver Skipp: “I think someone like Nelson Mandela. He had such an inspirational story. Also, I studied South African history at A Level, so getting a glimpse into his life would have taken up all those hours and then some!”
Football/pre-season
Q: What are your first impressions of your new team-mates?
Oliver Skipp: “They’ve all settled in really well, each bringing their different personalities to the table and integrating into the group. This is an easy group to settle into, and hopefully, we’ve made them all feel welcome. That’s something I think this group is really good at. You’ve already seen Madders’ personality, Destiny, Manor, Vic as well, it will be interesting to see what they all bring to the group. It’s always exciting when you meet your new team-mates.”
Team-mates
Q: What qualities do you like to see in a team-mate?
Oliver Skipp: “Someone you can trust, someone who can lift people through good and bad times, and someone who is good fun to be around. That’s important because we travel so much and we’re away quite often. So, you want someone who can lift individuals as well as the whole group. It’s important to have a variety of characters, and that can really translate to the pitch.”
Life
Q: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Oliver Skipp: “Interesting… obviously a footballer, but it was slightly different for me because my parents always let me be what I wanted. It wasn’t necessarily drummed into me; I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to do. I played loads of sports growing up, so being a sportsman of some type would have been on my agenda. However, I was just better at football than anything else! I always loved all sports, so any type of sportsman would have been the dream.”