Wood Glad To Be Back

The New Zealand international was put through his paces by Nigel Pearson and his staff along with the rest of the squad in a double training session, but passed the test with flying colours.

And the January signing revealed that he’d been doing plenty of work over the summer to keep himself in the best possible shape for the dreaded fitness tests on the first day back.

‘We’ve all had our programmes to stick to over the summer and it showed with the lads coming in today in good form that we’ve all been doing our work and we’ll be pushing on towards the start of the season,” Wood revealed to .

“Nobody likes the running work and if anybody tells you that they do then they’re lying. They’re not nice but you just get on with them and do them.”

For City the league kicks off on 3 August away at Middlesbrough, but before then there is a busy pre-season schedule to negotiate starting at Leamington FC on Friday 12 July, and with a host of sports science equipment being utilised in training, the players’ progress will be monitored closely.

Wood added: “Even on the training pitch you can’t hide behind other players or anything like that because you’ve got the GPS on and they are making sure that you’re working up to the right standards.

“It’s been a good month off to rest and recover mentally more than anything and we’ve all come back in good physical shape and it’s good to see all the lads. We spend every day with each other for 11 months, so a month away from everything can be much needed at the end of it, but they’re all good lads and they’ve come back looking good.

“I think it’s a bit too early to start setting targets for myself. I think first we’ve got to come in and do the business and get the team working well, then we will all have to fight for places.”