Giants’ Travel Plan Operates on Set Pattern

While the Giants pondered their Game Plan yesterday for Sunday's football meeting with the New England Patriots, the team's Travel Plan glided along smoothly on a trajectory arranged months ago.

For example, the players know they'll be taking a chartered United'Air Lines jet from Newark Airport tomorrow at 11.45 A.M. for the flight to Boston. They know because it says so in the published itinerary covering all pre‐season and regularseason road games.

They also know the pregame meal will be served at 8:45 A.M. Sunday in the Marriott Hotel in Newton, Mass. And they know what they'll get: 16‐ounce steaks with green beans and scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee, buttered toast and jello.

“They're big guys and they need big steaks,” Tom Power said yesterday by phone from the Giant training camp in West Long Branch, N.J., where Elridge Small and John Mendenhall were listed as “doubtful” for Sunday's game.

Small, a wide receiver who was the club's No. 1 draft pick, is still suffering from a hamstring pull in the left leg. Mendenhall, a defensive tackle, continues to be bothered by a twisted knee.

Power, the promotion director for the Giants, plays only a supporting role in the road productions. The actual “tour guide” is Ed Croke, the publicity boss.

Croke has been at the Marriott in Newton since Wednesday—arranging room occupancy, checking meal sites, lining up player interviews for local reporters and broadcasters, making radiotelevision appearances and setting up the “Five‐Thirty Club,” a hospitality suite where the Giants hold open house for the press from 5:30 to 6:30 P.M. the night before a road game.

“Ed does this for every game away from home,” said Power. “He's the advance man.”

Another major detail for the Giants, as well a for all the other teams, involves the shipment of uniforms, pads and other equipment. Generally, it's trucked to the airport the morning of the flight, and goes on the same plane with the team. The home team customarily supplies the towels.

Two doctors (an orthopedic specialist and the team physician) also fly with the Giants, as does Father Benedict Dudley, a priest who says Mass for the Catholic players in whatever hotel the team happens to be using.

There's an 11 P.M. curfew on the road. However, ex cept for the pre‐game meal, the players are largely on their own. They get a perdiem food allowance of $18.

For Sunday's 1 P.M. game, taping of knees, ankles, etc. will probably be done at the hotel because it's about a 25mile bus ride to Foxboro Stadium, halfway between Boston and Providence, R. I.

“The players get another steak on the plane going home from Boston to Newark,” Power said, “but it won't be as big as the first one.”

There's only one major difference between the preseason road productions and the regular‐season trips. With 57 players on the squad now, three buses are being used to shuttle them back and forth between the airports, the hotels and the playing sites. When the squad.shrinks to the regular 40‐man roster, the fleet of buses will be cut to two.