The Crystal Palace skipper, Shaun Derry, was not a part of the first pre-season tour to the USA two years ago.

This time round though he is looking forward to a pre-season schedule away from the British shores and here he talks to us about some exciting exhibition matches, the importance of team bonding and carrying the Palace name across the Atlantic.

This tour is quite different from last season's jaunt to the south west coast. Are you looking forward to it?

Yeah definitely. I know it has been in the pipeline for a few months. We actually became aware of it just before the season ended and it was clearly something that the boys were really keen on doing for pre-season.

We have been doing pre-season over in England the last few seasons and I know the boys went to America four, five years ago and they said it was a fantastic place to train because it breaks up the day-to-day grind of getting through the six weeks of pre-season. It also enables us to spread the word over in the States and so I think it is a good thing for both sides.

People will obviously point to the distance that you will be travelling as well as the difficulties of the different time zones. How much will these factors affect your training?

I think having just come back from the States myself, it clearly knocks you for six for the first day, but with us being out there for such a short space of time you can get away from the bug of not sleeping properly.

But, at the same time, we have a number of weeks to recover in time sufficiently for the start of the season so I don't see that as a problem really. We might just have to adapt things slightly but I am not too worries about it.

How important are trips like these for other factors, such as team bonding?

This is what these pre-season tours are all about. In my opinion, although you go there and play the games the key element isn't the results. Luckily the results process doesn't kick in until the first game of the season.

For me the main priority is to be with the squad for a good four or five days and get to know people who you might not get to speak to on a daily basis because you might train twice a week in pre-season and you concentrate purely on the the training aspect. Being in a squad for four or five days in a hotel, it just gives you the opportunity to get to know your new team mates and so from that aspect I think it is brilliant.

Again, by the same merit, some people will say that these things can be achieved just as well with a tour closer to home. What would you say to those critics?

Well people will always have their opinion and that is part and parcel of the game, especially when you talk about things like going to another country for a pre-season tour.

I know [having a tour in England] is key for some of the Palace fans who don't get to see us regularly through the season and would like to see us in our pre-season fixtures, but at the same time you look at the destination where we are going and look at who we are playing out there it is about building bridges.

This could be an almighty key to the next generation of supporters for this club and if you can get them from the foreign base then the size of the club can go up dramatically, and that is just from one tour so that is what we are hoping for with this trip.

How important do you see this trip as part of widening Crystal Palace's support bases to another set of fans?

You can do all the publicising you want in England and hope that it gets across the globe but there is no better way than actually getting the troops together, on a plane and showing your faces and doing some public relations events out there and hopefully that can coincide with the training regime we will be doing. So I think it is massive that we go out there and bring our name to them instead of it maybe reaching them through other means.

Is there an awareness of the necessity to strengthen the Crystal Palace brand across the world within the dressing room?

I know that Palace USA are not in the MLS but they are not far away from it but hopefully they can become a feeder club because as you know we have a huge amount of young talent coming through the system at the minute and rather than put them into the hustle and bustle of lower league football sometimes certain players need different avenues to progress.

Sometimes these kind of destinations are less abrasive on the physical side and more on the technical side of the game and some players need that as well so hopefully we can use it as a feeder club and just for the boys to go out there and see a different way of life to learn something from the Americans as well.

Plus it will be great to have both Palace teams broadcast live into American front rooms

Absolutely. I touched on it earlier that I have just come back from America myself and having spoken to a number of people out there there a lot of people unaware of Crystal Palace and you speak to them and explain to them what a serious sport it is here and you know what the Americans are like, they will give anything a go so just to spread the word of Palace it will be a major coup for the club really.