Community backing helping Yorkshire Carnegie slowly rebuild

It has been a tough few months since Carnegie ran into financial difficulties and lost an entire first team.

A potential penalty of 28 points is still looming, stemming from issues with those financial difficulties, and former scrum-half Wood, 42, needs to build an entire squad before the RFU Championship Cup begins on September 20, the domestic season three weeks later.

“We’re still trying to build at the minute so pre-season hasn’t really started for us,” said Wood, speaking from the Greene King IPA Championship launch event at Twickenham Stadium.

“Every day we’re a bit more positive on building on the blocks we’ve already put in place. We’re looking forward to it.

“It’s tough at the moment but to be honest we’ve had a lot of support from people in Yorkshire.

“Obviously we’ve had some negative press and I understand it, I get it, but from my point of view there’s been a lot more positives to come out of this and I know there’s a lot of people in Yorkshire backing us.”

The former Hull Ionians coach has made a good start to building a squad, fly-half Joe Ford heading back to Carnegie for a fourth time from Premiership side Leicester Tigers.