The previous three sessions have all been well attended and as The Town wait for a start date from football’s governing bodies, Winter now has all but one member of last season’s squad signed on with arrivals Gav King and Jack Dando also confirmed.

With daily life still affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, Winter has discussed what work went into the lads returning to training and detailed how they were all being kept safe.

“There’s been a lot of planning going on,” said Winter.

“We’ve had regular meetings, me, Steve, Lee and Adge, via computer.

“We’re three weeks into our socially distanced sessions now. I work at Portland College and I was tasked with arranging the college to be socially distanced, putting one way systems in place and doing all the screening, so it was good to be able to bring that to Ollerton and get us started.

“We put lads in groups of six in their own 20 metre squares and that’s gone well. We screen lads on arrival, we’ve got hand sanitiser everywhere. We’ve got Adge, bless him, who has gone from Manager to General Manager and he’s now happy to disinfect every cone we use.

“Your limited to what ball work you can do but we’ve managed to do a bit. I think the lads are itching to get some five-a-side going and that sort of stuff.”

Given that there is still so much uncertainty around when football will return, it would have been easy for the players to take their foot off the gas during lockdown but Winter says they all used the time productively and have returned in good shape.

“It’s not like when I used to come back for pre-season training,” joked our long-serving gaffer.

“We were having a little chuckle about this, me and Steve. We’re both early forties, both played, and every pre-season we used to dread. I used to be a stone overweight, thinking I’m not going to manage that running.

“Nowadays, the lads come back in decent condition anyway. They had 12, 13, 14 weeks of lockdown and they’re all running 5 kilometres against their mates and stuff like that.

“I put them on a Bleep Test and there’s lads hitting 17 or 18 in the first session. I’ve been really impressed and they’re working really hard.”

The club were proactive in their return to training, moving quickly once the FA guidelines had been announced. In the brutal environment of non-league social media, Winter appreciates we may have been judged for returning when we did but he claims the mental benefits also played a big part in the decision.

“Quite a few people I know suffered mentally during lockdown,” Winter confessed.

“I know how important coming back to football has been for a lot of these lads who might be struggling financially, out of work or not been able to see their partners or parents.

“We’ve had every member of our squad at training over the three weeks, I’ve never had that in pre-season before.

“We can get called out on Twitter with people saying ‘No point in training’ and things but I want folk to look deeper than that.”

With league constitutions set to be announced next week, and further progress on the new season expected to follow, Winter is looking forward to getting back to it and hopes to get a start date soon.

“I’m looking forward to the season ahead. We know what we need to do,” the gaffer said.

“We just need that start date now and then we can start playing a few friendlies. We’ve got friendlies lined up, we had them lined up in June, I’m not going to lie.

“We’re going to give it a real go as soon as we get that date.”