PERTH Glory striker Robbie Fowler insists a missed training session is nothing for fans to worry about ahead of Sunday's clash with Gold Coast United.
On a chilly, wet day in Perth, the 35-year-old Liverpool legend declared that a lighter training load was one of the few concessions to age he was making as he looks to prolong his career.
"(It's) just a little bit of stiffness from the weekend," Fowler said. "Nothing too serious, so just one or two days off you know.
"I'm on a monitored training schedule anyway, it's nothing serious. I'm just obviously not as young as I once was and the staff here have been good with me and (so it's) all modified training sessions for me."
While the Glory staff have been good for Fowler since his move from North Queensland Fury in the off-season, the striker's also been good for the club, setting up numerous goals and scoring twice in the last two weeks.
Fowler could probably have scored a hat-trick in last Sunday's 2-1 win over Wellington, but fluffed his lines on a couple of occasions.
However, it was his good work that set up Glory's opening goal, a brilliant pass from midfield releasing Todd Howarth down the left, with the winger squaring it up for Mile Sterjovski to score.
"I am really happy with the way I've started the season," Fowler said. "I've obviously missed a large chunk of pre-season, but game-wise, I feel good.
"If I'm being honest, I probably would have liked to score more goals but I've done all right, I'm setting up goals and I've scored a few the last few weeks, so I'm more than happy."
Despite his age, Fowler appears to be covering a huge amount of ground for Glory with the striker popping up in defence last week against Phoenix, while also using his superb passing to great effect from the midfield to release players like Howarth and Sterjovski on the flanks.
But Fowler denies he's been asked to play a more midfield role.
"In football sometimes you've got to move to try and get space and sometimes, you can't sort of stand with the back four because you can get picked up easy," Fowler said.
"So you have got to move about and even if it means dropping deeper then so be it."
The striker will need to be at his best this weekend though, coming up against Gold Coast in the Iron Ore Cup, contested between the two mining magnate owners - Glory's Tony Sage and United's Clive Palmer.
Glory have never beaten Gold Coast in a competitive fixture and with new striker Bruce Djite in the visiting side to replace the departed Shane Smeltz, Fowler is expecting United to come out firing as they look for their first win of the campaign.
"Last year they were probably one of the better teams in the league, football-wise," Fowler said. "Miron's (Miron Bleiberg) a very good manager and he will have them playing football again this year.
"It'll be a tough game and I think we've seen in the previous weeks, I think any team can beat anyone on any given day.
"It's by no means an easy game and it's one that we'll go into and we'll do a lot of work this week and see where that takes us."
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