It’s still June but Workington Reds are preparing to open their pre-season campaign today with the first friendly.
They are travelling 69 miles into Scotland to take on Queen of the South with Darren Edmondson’s first look at his squad despite having limited training sessions behind them.
It is one of their earliest ever starts to a pre-season programme which, hopefully, will prepare them for the serious stuff commencing in August.
Long gone are the days when teams squeezed a couple of friendlies into the schedule before embarking on their respective league programme.
The Scottish football season gets underway earlier than their counterparts south of the border, but the lower levels of the English non-league pyramid will be playing competitively in July.
It makes life difficult for clubs at our level to arrange a competitive programme of matches before the real business gets underway on August 9.
Jack Dickinson, one of over two dozen players who have links to both clubs, scored for Queens in one of the many previous games with the Reds.
Two others, skipper Matty Douglas and Taylor Charters, will be expected to feature as well.
Former Carlisle United player and Annan Athletic manager, Peter Murphy, guided Queens to a third place finish in Scottish League One last term but they then failed to get promotion via the play-offs.
They began their preparations earlier this week with a game at Glenafton Athletic which they won 3-1 and also host Morton before their Premier Sports Cup group fixtures against Edinburgh City, Ross County, Partick Thistle and Stranraer.
