North End boss Graham Westley admitted the seven hour session he put his players through on Monday may have taken their toll in the clash with Chorley.
But feels the long term benefits will outweigh the short term pain!
He saw his side share the Jack Kirkland Trophy with Chorley at Victory Park, but admitted afterwards that he had put his players through a military style endurance session the day before the game and that there were some aching bodies being put on the line.
“It was pretty evident to me that we trained seven hours on Monday,” said the North End gaffer. “We did a very long day. We had our army friends in and they worked very very hard.
“I think in our play tonight the normal levels of physicality you would normally expect to see from us were lacking.
“If you looked at the energy to get into the box in the final third and the energy needed to make the right decisions in the final third were missing.
“It was a good test for them, there were some very tired bodies. I think they realise that they took some easy options when the going was tough and mentally we’ve got to get a lot stronger mentally, but the whole point of pre-season is to learn lessons and we learnt lessons tonight.”
Despite this, the side put in some high tempo work and passing and created plenty of chances for the 1,332 crowd to witness and the manager was pleased with passages of the performance and play.
“There were some good passages of play,” he continued. “We showed good control of the football. What we did, once we’d got in control of the game by scoring the opening goal, the tiredness factor meant we played in a bit of a comfort zone and we paid the price of that by conceding an equaliser.”