Gunnedah FC players have savoured the feeling of kicking the ball around again for the first time since the season was abruptly halted back in mid-March.
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Permitted to resume training from Wednesday, albeit with restrictions, the club wasted little time, holding their first training session in almost two-and-a-half months on Wednesday night.
Coach Andy Cygan said it was a bit different with the various restrictions but there was a real sense of excitement about getting back into it.
"Everyone was keen to back out there," he said.
"We had 19 players which was really good first session back."
"It is a bit different trying to do a training session when you can't actually tackle or get close to each other but good to try and do something again."
Even though a lot of the players had been trying to stay active, it was a bit of a rude awakening for them.
"We did a bit of a boot camp," Cygan said.
"One of our coaches is very much into that kind of thing so he ran that for about half an hour."
"I've heard from a couple of people that they are really aching today."
Cygan himself joked that he has never done as many push ups.
With just over a month until the season is anticipated to kick-off (the governing body is hoping to return to playing in early July), they are throwing themselves back into it with a vengeance.
"We got in contact with all the players. We've offered Monday,Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. If there's enough interest we can run each night," Cygan said.
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'We've got three coaches with myself and two other guys now so we can split into smaller groups."
He said there is a little bit more planning involved.
Along with the restrictions on contact (no contact is allowed at this stage) and social distancing (there can only be a maximum of 10 people per group) there's also a lot of little things "that you usually take for granted" that you can't do. For example you can't touch the ball so you can't do throw-ins.
Still he is happy to be lacing up the boots again.
Before COVID shut everything down, Cygan was pretty happy with how they were tracking. Now they are playing catch-up.
"We're going to be way behind where we were a few months back. We'd trained pretty hard for probably 10 weeks and then nothing," he said.
It was already going to be a hard year for them stepping up to premier grade.
Fortunately the break doesn't seem to have impacted their numbers too much. While they lost a few players that has been evened out by the return of a few players that weren't actually going to play this season.
They have also picked up a guy that has come up from Sydney.
"He'll be brilliant," Cygan said.
"He's going to surprise a few teams so we're lucky to have him."
