MANAGER Denny Ingram insists that Pickering Town’s pre-season preparations remain on track despite having to cancel this weekend’s pre-season friendly against Blackpool Wren Rovers.

A combination of a lack of available players due to holiday commitments and the departures of five first-team players this summer meant just 13 players were available for the seaside trip which prompted to the cancellation.

Joe Danby, Lewis Taylor, Josh Greening, Nick Thompson and Stuart Mott have all left the club over the off-season.

In their place, Matty Savage, Joel Dixon, Michael Hollingsworth and Jackson Jowett have joined Town, though they remain unavailable for selection currently given their holiday commitments.

“Our friendly against Blackpool Wren Rovers has been cancelled which is a shame,” said Ingram.

“We were down on numbers as we only had 13 available players.

“A few lads have had knocks and there are several players on holiday. It just wouldn’t have benefitted either ourselves or Blackpool, so it was the right thing to do.

“We’ll train tonight and on Friday night and have the weekend off before we play Knaresborough at home on the 17th. We’ll have more players back and ready to play then.”

“Pre-season is going well so far even though it is early days in terms of the schedule. I think the main thing that we’re working on is our fitness levels, as most sides do at this stage of the season.

“At this stage, we’re more concerned with getting our fitness levels to where they need to be and the sooner we get to the season, we’ll look at things like tactics and those types of things.

“I’m really pleased with the level of fitness that the boys have shown so far since coming back into the side.

“Their baseline level of fitness is good at this stage. We’re still working on a few things and hopefully they’ll come off for us.”

So far in pre-season, Pickering have won 4-0 at Barton Town and lost 4-2 at Stockton Town.