YORK City Knights’ training schedule has not been overly affected by the icy weather, according to boss Dave Woods.

The Knights’s pre-season programme picks up pace on Bank Holiday Monday when they play their rearranged charity match against the York Select XIII, assuming the big freeze does not return.

That will be their first run-out since the Championship One Grand Final triumph.

Sport across the country has been largely wiped out by the weather but the Knights’ preparations have continued regardless, although they do now want to increase the amount of training – ball work and match simulation – they do on the pitch, to add to the fitness work off it.

“We trained right through the weather,” said Woods.

“We’ve done stacks of indoor work so in that sense we’ve not really been affected by it.

“Hopefully we can do more ball work now. We don’t have the facilities we would like – we don’t want to wreck the pitch before we even play on it, and finding places with grass and floodlights is not easy.

“We will be out on the field on Monday and have a real tough field session.”

The players have had a fortnight off, with their last session having been on Tuesday, December 21.

The players not in the team for the Select game on Christmas Monday would have had a session that day but that was cancelled when the match itself was postponed. They will now be back in this Monday, ahead of the rearranged game.

Woods said: “We would normally give them a couple of weeks off over Christmas and putting this match back a week hasn’t really affected our plans too much.”

The Knights, now without star signing Jason Demetriou after his quickfire exit to join Keighley as head coach, begin their season on February 6 with a Northern Rail Cup group match at Championship foes Barrow.

They have four pre-season fixtures before then, with games against Castleford, St Helens and Leeds following Monday’s outing, the Lee McTigue Memorial Match, and it is hoped the weather relents enough for the squad to get outdoors more often.

Woods added: “There are things you can do on grass they you can’t do indoors, like game simulation. We’re still doing contact work and wrestling and we’ve been doing some real physical stuff.

“Some clubs haven’t had the luxury of getting indoors like we have so I’m pretty happy in general with how we’re going.

“You can see the players’ body shapes are different and the test results are different.”

Woods is set to run on Monday with the same line-up that had been pencilled in to play first time around, although hooker Chris Williams is added to that list, while reserve Sean Carmody could also play if he is back from Ireland in time. Both were unavailable last week.

As previously reported, fans will get a first look at new recruits Dave Sutton, Matt Garside and Mark Barlow, who are all in the line-up, as will Tom Bush, who will play if Carmody is unavailable.

Fans’ favourite Dennis Tuffour, who has now joined permanently after impressing while on loan/dual-registration from Hull last summer, will also take the field.

Utility player Barlow will play at half-back alongside youngster Scott Woods, while Lee Waterman, Championship One’s top points-scorer last year playing at centre, will be tried at loose-forward, a position in which he shone as an amateur.

Fans will also get a look at young hooker Andy Gray, who hails from the North East, and, among other reserves, Ben Hepworth, a young forward who has been on trial after switching from York RUFC.

Knights (v York Select XIII): from Bush/Carmody, Mole, Sutton, M Mitchell, Tuffour, Barlow, Woods, Stearman, Gray, Burns, Rice, Lewis, Waterman, Williams, Hepworth, H Mitchell, Garside, Fairclough, Winstanley, Holmes, Brining.