York City hoping to make the most of play-off chance

The team manager Steve Watson selects will boil down simply to who he thinks is most ready.

Watson has been impressed with how well his players maintained their fitness on furlough, but getting them match-ready is much tougher.

“The chairman (Jason McGill) has allowed us to keep a number together that would allow us to match-train knowing we were not going to get much chance to even play friendlies,” says Watson, whose players have been training in groups of five since late June, but only working together for around a week because of the covid-19 protocols.

“We had a hybrid friendly against Halifax at the training ground, not quite for 90 minutes because it was the week of their game (the Conference play-off quarter-final they lost at Boreham Wood), but there have been other clubs, Harrogate who I’ve spoken to, who haven’t played one.

“It’s impossible to completely replicate a match in training but you try and get as close as you can.

“We’ve had two or three injuries which have been a pain, a bit niggly. It’s been trying to find a happy medium between getting them back and not making it worse. I think you’ll know by the team selection on Saturday who’s fit and who’s not.

“If you pick up two, three, four injuries you have to take the foot off the gas because you physically can’t afford any more. At the start of this week, we had four or five not training because of injury.”

It makes team selection even more challenging for Watson, who at least has the luxury of a 24-man squad. “The lads’ fitness levels have been very good. Some tested better than in pre-season.

“Teams at our level haven’t got the personnel and the staff to write individual training programmes so we set the lads out on just a basic fitness programme and kept in touch with them regularly as a group with things like group quizzes.

“In the middle of the season you pick the players that are in form, but when you’ve had 20 weeks off, a lot of the thought process is about who me, Micky (Cummins, his assistant) and Buster (physio Ian Gallagher) consider the most ready.

“Other clubs have asked and forced managers to make decisions but from day one I asked if we could keep our squad together until we knew what was happening.”

It was a particularly testing lockdown for the Minstermen, who went into it top of Conference North but finished second when it was finally decided to apply points-per-game. Initially, the Government ruled the sixth-tier was not sufficiently “elite” to allow play-offs but changed their mind, so York host opponents who beat Chester City 3-2 in the first stage of the National League’s convoluted play-offs. The final is on August 2, at Bootham Crescent if York reach it.

“It’s been a really tough process from the season ending and us being in the position we were, to a long time not knowing if football was going to return, when it was going to return and in what capacity, then getting the worst possible news from our scenario,” reflects Watson.

“There were so many important things going on in the world it seemed very trivial to get overly upset about football decisions but it went through a spell where we thought it was going to be over, just one promoted, and now we are days away from a second chance.”

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