Joint Golcar United manager Ash Connor admits the “longest pre-season ever” is not ideal, but says his players are just glad to be back training and playing.
Connor and his joint manager brother Gavin have been putting the Golcar players through their paces since June in preparation for a potential September 5th start.
That changed last week when the North West Counties League put back the provisional start date to October 3rd following new lockdown restrictions in Greater Manchester, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale.
“We were hoping to start on 5th September, but they’ve put it back a month so we’re going to have the longest pre-season ever,” Connor told Non League Yorkshire.
“Everything is so uncertain at the moment so it was probably the right decision. You don’t know what’s happening and it has got to be safe.
“The Northern Counties East is still unsure if they’ll start on the 5th September so at least the North West Counties have least given everyone a bit more time to prepare.
“The situation is still fragile and I saw on the North West Counties website last night that Charnock Richard had had a Covid case and it is scary. You’re probably right (that they won’t be the only ones) and there’s probably clubs who have had cases and don’t even know.
“It is frustrating because we want to get going, but it has to be as safe as possible.”
Golcar haven’t rested on their laurels as their actual first competitive game of the season is set to be on the 19th September in the FA Vase.
“We did think about cancelling friendlies as a club, but I think the lads prefer to get their fitness up through playing rather than training,” he said.
“The players are really enjoying pre-season and they’re eager to get going and they were a bit disappointed when we found out the league was getting put back to October.
“The first thought was ‘how are we going to keep the players engaged’? You have to keep them engaged and enjoying because in pre-season nobody gets anything for doing it. It has to be serious, but enjoyable.
“It has affected us. If we had known earlier, we wouldn’t have started pre-season or even stopped it because we’d have started at the end of August for an October start.
“We made the decision to start social-distancing training in June and then the announcement came that we could contact training and it was great and everything seemed to be going in the right direction.
“When they put out the announcement about October 3rd it did knock us back a bit.
“When we started pre-season we were training twice a week and when we thought we were starting on the 5th we built it up to three times a week.
“With us finding out that it is October, we have dropped it to twice a week and we’ll pick it up again with three times a week in September.
“The FA Vase is due to be played on the 19th September so we’re building up to that and everything we’re doing is with a purpose. We’ve made our signings and we want to start working on how we’re hoping to play when the season does eventually start.
“We have had a lot of trialists that we’re looking at in the friendlies. The friendlies are more about fitness at the minute and we have probably used 30 players over the three friendlies we have played so far.
“We played Springhead from Manchester and beat them 5-0, then Field from Bradford and beat them 7-3 on Saturday and we obviously lost 2-1 to Glasshoughton on Tuesday.”
The list of managers and players who have openly admitted doubts over the viability of a full season between September or October and April is growing.
The widely-called for localised leagues is becoming a very real proposition as the FA have previously said the start date is November then that is a route they will be prepared to go down.
Athersley Rec chief Shane Kelsey suggested extending the season to June and Connor agrees that idea has merits.
“I think they got to try and do a full season,” he said.
“It is either that or the localised leagues which have been mentioned.
“Finishing in June does make sense and that’s probably what I’d do; extend the end date. It makes sense to be.”
One other disappointment of pre-season has been the fact star striker Buddy Cox limped off in one of the friendlies.
“He’s injured unfortunately, it is a hamstring injury,” he said.
“He did that against Springhead. He came on at half-time and only played about three minutes and had to come off.
“It wasn’t good to see. It has been frustrating for Buddy because he had that great season when he scored 50 goals and then last season he had an injury-hit season.
“I just hope we can get him back involved and firing this season. It was only a hamstring strain so we’re hoping he’s going to be back training with us this week.”