Hinckley AFC manager Joe Conneely says this summer hasn’t changed his “hatred” of pre-season but says he knows what he still needs to do between now and the start of the competitive season.
Hinckley have now played six of their seven scheduled pre-season games, the latest a 1-0 defeat at home to Ingles.
With Hinckley missing Matt Dawson, Ethan Flaig, Will Harris, Lewis Rankin, Bryan Kohyrelon and Sam Lockley through a variety of reasons, the side was a very different one to that which will take to the field in the competitive season.
And Conneely said the high turnover of players during pre-season makes it hard to prepare for what’s to come.
He said: “I hate it! You’ve got players on holiday, injured, or unavailable, so you’re trying to build for the season with players missing. So it’s a bit all overt the place.
“We had a lot of the ball, we played Ingles because we knew they’d be hard to break down. We’re going to face games like that. Our build was nice but we didn’t create enough and we need more of a goal threat so we’ve got a lot of work to do.
“But it’s about getting work into lads. Results are irrelevant, there’s nothing on the line apart from getting into decent habits.
“It’s been a busy schedule, we wanted to get the Quorn game in to keep that relationship going but we’ve probably played one too many and it’s taken a bit more out of the lads than we’d have liked.”
Hinckley have one final friendly before the start of the competitive season – and it sees the annual visit to Heather St John’s for the Simon Blyth Memorial Trophy on Saturday.
It’s an occasion Conneely always looks forward to and says it’s the perfect way to end a pre-season campaign.
“There’s always a bit more on the Simon Blyth Memorial Trophy, and it’s a good one to finish on against a Heather side who will be looking to get promoted. They’d hold their own in our league so it’ll be a bit more like a league game.
“But we want to win there, we’ve won the trophy for the last two years so we want to make it three in a row.
“But you’re not settled until September time with lads being away, so you’ve just got to get through this spell. We’ve had six good games, I’m looking forward to getting the last one out of the way so we can train twice next week before Daventry.”
After the departures of Adam Barber and Leo Farruch over the summer, Conneely has been seeking new additions down the left side. He had a look at a winger against Ingles and said he’s hopeful of adding to his squad before the trip to Daventry.
“Hopefully he does sign, he’ll be good for us. He hasn’t played a lot of football but he beat people second half. He’ll only get better and better so we’d like to get that one done and in the building.
“We lost Barber who was a big player for us, we thought we had a left-back in to replace him. He gave me his word but now he’s gone elsewhere. That’s what this time of season is like, so we’ll keep trying.”
