He said: “The first session back is always a tough one for the lads but I thought they looked sharp, I’m happy with the first session and we had good numbers there as well despite a few still being on holiday.”

The players began by working on fitness to start the session before bringing in ball work later into the training.

Donnelly believes that having his players working with the ball from the early stages is important in order to get his players ready for the upcoming season.

Donnelly said: “We want to play football first and foremost so there will be a lot of work with the ball. There will also obviously be fitness work, we’ve been having them do quite a bit of running tonight.

“It’s important to make sure that we get the balance right between the fitness work and getting the players working on the ball, but there will definitely be a lot of work with the ball because that’s ultimately how we want to play.”

The training session featured a lot of familiar faces for Nailers fans and a handful of new players as well that are being monitored by Anthony and Paul.

Donnelly came into the job with the hope of securing a lot of the current squad for next season but also bringing in some new faces to keep things fresh.

He said: “We’re still working very hard to get some players in, we’ve had a few trainings with us and we’ve secured quite a few of the squad from last year which was a priority for us when we first got here.

“There is still a lot of work to be done but we still have a bit of time in pre-season so we are confident that we can get a good squad out there and hit the ground running at the start of next season.”

The Nailers pre-season fixtures begin on July 8th when we travel to face Midlands League side Coleshill Town.

Donnelly is looking forward to the beginning of the games and hopes that the shape of the team will begin to form over those matches.

“pre-season is always about getting fitness into the legs as well as working on the shape and how we want to play with the players.

“It’s always better for the players and for the management when the games get started, you prefer to be playing than training really.

“There will be a lot of hard work to do as we want to stamp our authority onto how we want the team to play, we’ll be working on a lot of things in the pre-season games as well as giving a lot of the good young players at the club a chance to see how they cope with things.”

The visit to Coleshill Town kicks off at 3 pm and we look forward to seeing as many fans as possible to see the players in action.