Ahead of the start of pre-season training tonight, Hinckley AFC manager Joe Conneely says he’s happy with the state of his side six weeks out from the start of the new campaign.
A player can’t sign for a club until registration forms come out in early July, and we’ll announce who’s been retained and brought in once a form has been signed.
But Conneely says he, along with his backroom team of Sam Belcher and Alfie Marsden, have retained the bulk of last season’s squad and complemented that with some new additions.
He said: “We’ve not kept everybody, but we’ve kept the vast majority and we’ve been working really hard to bring players in as well.
“We had a couple of weeks to reset and then we got together as a staff to recap last year. We discussed the things we hope to improve on, what we need to do and what we did well.
“We need to keep getting better, it’s an extremely tough league this year. The UCL South is quickly becoming the league that teams don’t want to come into, whereas a few years ago it was the one everyone wanted to be in.
“So we know we need to get better, and to do that we need new players. We’ll have 14 or 15 new faces at training tonight, including one or two who we know well, as well as all the lads we’ve kept.”
Conneely and his staff have two weeks to put the squad through its paces before the opening friendly out of seven in pre-season.
That comes at Sutton United on Tuesday 1st July, when preparations ramp up with seven games in 19 days ahead of the first day of the new season on 26th July.
“We’ve put together a really structured pre-season plan together with sessions and games.
“Our first three friendlies will be having a look at people, including Coventry Sphinx. We’ve got a couple of lads still away for the first week or so of friendlies so that’ll be our chance to have a look at things. Then once we get to Quorn and Skegness we’ll be honing down on what our squad will be.
“But the fundamentals and non-negotiables are implemented from tonight. From now, everything we do is with a purpose. How we want to play, how we want to press and win the ball back, everything is gearing up towards the 26th July.
“We can’t start slowly. We’ve got to get off to good start and be set for that date. We’ve got to be more structured out of possession, without being rigid and still letting lads express themselves.”
