Ashford United manager Craig Stone open to helping players get ready for pre-season

Ashford United manager Craig Stone is likely to offer close-season training sessions again this summer.

A number of Nuts & Bolts players took up the offer last year, along with players from other clubs.

Some observers questioned whether it was too much after Ashford made a slow start to the league campaign amid some early injury problems.

But that was never the case for Stone, who saw Ashford get stronger as the season progressed.

“There were probably five or six of our players who took part, so not a great amount,” said Stone.

“There was talk, was it too soon, was it too early to start?

“But I’m telling you now, a lot of those lads will be back in training, a lot of them will be looking after themselves and preparing for pre-season because that’s the way the football world is now.

“They won’t want to be going into pre-season after doing nothing.

“This was only once a week and there were maybe two sessions, max, that people did before pre-season.

“Look at full-time football, people are training every day.

“Last year, what I did, and what I always do, was a training group for anyone in non-league or young academy lads who want to tick over in the off-season.

“It’s just an opportunity that’s there if people want to do it. There were some Ashford boys but also players from all over who just wanted to do a session that was football-related.

“Do I think it had a negative impact? No. I think we were just unfortunate where Sam Hasler had a little reoccurring injury, I believe, and we ended up losing Barry Fuller to a freak injury into the season.

“If you look at whether we started too early, we actually got stronger after Christmas, so I don’t think we did.

“We’ll probably do something similar but we haven’t looked into it too