THE VICS COLUMN – By Paul Bazley

Well, after three months, football is back….well some football anyway as the Premier League and Championship are finishing off last season, while League One and Two are playing crucial play-off matches to decide promotion whilst the National League has decided to do the final positions on a points per game basis.

Of course, further down the football ladder, at Vics’ level, the season has been declared null and void. So much for a clear policy throughout football!

The decision of the Premier League to resume playing, even without supporters being able to watch their team just shows how much TV money plays a part in deciding policy and how unimportant the fans who go week in, week out are.

Fancy being a Liverpool supporter and not being able to watch your team win their first Premier League title! The fact that the TV companies then give an option to be able to have crowd atmosphere switched on or off as you watch on TV just emphasises what you’re missing. Anyway enough of a rant!

Back at proper football, it’s been good to see that the Trickies are back in training ready for the new season, whenever that will be, with September being the best bet at the moment. Obviously, training at the moment is mainly about assessing the fitness of the players after the enforced break rather than tactics.

This means lots of running, sprinting and the such like including the dreaded bleep test which really brings out the competitive element of the players as they all try and beat each other.

Of course, at the moment all this has to be done within the rules of social distancing which itself limits some of the things that can be done. One of the fun things for the supporters about training at this stage of pre-season is the speculation and the rumours of new players, as well as which of last season’s squad have returned, who may have been spotted at the training sessions and message boards and forums are rife with names.

Some will be true, but a lot will just be one night wonders or just plain misidentification of players. So far at Vics, no sign of Messi or Ronaldo but this may be just down to travel restrictions!

Anyway, Scott Campbell, the coach has been putting them through their paces, and although its very early to judge, it looks like most players have been able to keep themselves fit and in shape during the lockdown which is promising for the new season.

Now we just await word of when exactly that new season will start, then the proper work of training and pre-season matches can begin in earnest.

Hopefully we’ll get word of all that in the next two weeks or so. In the meantime, stay safe.