After a week back at Glanford Park, the Iron’s first game of pre-season is almost upon them in the form of Gainsborough Trinity.
Manager Mark Robins has stated it is a feature of pre-season that players are most eager to reach, with the trip to the Northolme eagerly anticipated on Saturday.“You have your first week and everybody wants to play games,” he told The Iron Player HD.
“At the end of the first week, you get to the Saturday and there’s nothing like playing games. The ball has been out on the training field from minute one, so we’ve done plenty of work with the ball.
“They’re always looking to play and chomping at the bit to play games, so it will probably be two teams who get 45 minutes apiece and see how we do.
“Gainsborough are a local team and I know a few of their players and it makes for an interesting game – which they always are. Generally, they’re always levellers because there’s always fatigue in the legs. It’s a good game to start with.
“Results don’t matter – although we want to win every game – it’ll be a case of getting out there and playing. Like I said, results at this stage don’t matter – too much – as long as we win.”
Following that match, the Iron will fly out to Marbella for a week’s pre-season training which is inclusive of one
“We will fly out to Spain on the Sunday and train in a different kind of heat,” he continued.
“It’s important we play some decent football before we go away and that preparations are as good as they possibly can be. Everybody looks at the games to see if they can gauge anything from it, but you can’t generally gauge anything from it apart from fitness and whether the side is gelling together.
“At this moment in time, we have 24 men who will travel to Spain with the staff and those players are in this building at this moment in time. There will be one or two who miss out inevitably, so those players will have to train with the academy to get the work into them that way.
“Everybody is working hard. We are going in a direction and we want to build momentum and there’s a good feeling around the place with everything that is going on at the moment.
“We’ve got to maintain that, keep focused and bring it all together.”
See much more from Mark Robins and others on The Iron Player HD.