Celtic skipper Scott Brown admits he's found it weird to be be training at home every day but says competitions with his team-mates is keeping him going.
The veteran midfielder also revealed Kris Ajer is repeatedly topping the charts on one particular challenge, but reckons the Norwegian might have an unfair advantage.
Brown is approaching the latter end of his career and the coronavirus crisis is eating into valuable playing time but he admits that staying in contact with the squad has been huge.
Regular texts in group chats and calls on FaceTime have led to challenges being set to push them forward.
He told CelticTV: “It’s been weird. I’ve never been on my phone so much in my life before – group chats, FaceTiming and things like that – but I’ve still been able to train at home. I’ve got a bike in the house and I’ve been out running as well, so it’s been different.
“At the end of each week, Jack Nayler puts up a chart of who’s winning, who’s done the most high-intensity workrate, who’s ran the highest peaks, which Kris Ajer seems to be winning every day because I think he stays on a cliff!
“Competition is always good in the squad, whether you’re at training or now, when we’re all at home. We’ve all got the bikes, we’ve all got the heart-rate monitors, so they put the challenge on, we accept the challenge and we’ve got to try and fight against each other because you don’t want to be in that last position.”
Celtic launched their player of the year awards this week and one of the categories is goal of the year.
Ryan Christie suggested that Brown's late winner against Hamilton should be considered but there's only one winner for the Hoops captain.
He believes it has to go to Olivier Ntcham for the dramatic late goal against Lazio in the Europa League.
He added: “Lazio away was a huge game for us, and Ollie’s goal showed you the team effort and how hard we work. Ollie came on and he showed why we’ve got such a strong squad – the top quality player that he is, he managed to dink the goalie and the celebrations going together.
“We’d never won in Italy before so to do it for the first time against a top quality team like Lazio – it was an incredible achievement.”
