Manager Keith Hill spoke to Dale Player following Tuesday night’s pre-season friendly win over Chester FC…
“I think it was more like it tonight.
“It was difficult on Sunday [against AFC Fylde] because we came back from Tenerife on Thursday and had two days in between as rest days where we didn’t do any training.
“It was a little bit lethargic but it was what I expected so I wasn’t overly concerned, but coming into training yesterday [Monday] I thought we saw a real sharpness.
“I thought the first half team showed great energy. It’s always difficult coming on as a second half team but I think they showed great spirit when Chester had one or two opportunities and they kept the ball out of the net.”
He added: “We’re in a training zone. The way that we’re working it out is that the players are playing 45 minutes each. We trained exceptionally hard on Monday, we trained this morning before the match then came into the game and we gave all the players 45 minutes each. We wanted to treat it as a training session and we achieved a lot of what I expect going into the rest of the week.
“I’m not bothered whether we deserved to win, whether we should have won it or we should have lost it.
“I know that some of the players are ready already, I know some of the players need to catch up, but as long as they’re honest they will catch up to that match tempo that I expect. As long as we’ve got all the players prepared for the Peterborough game, that’s all I’m interested in. As long as they keep trying to do what we’re trying to achieve on the training pitch, then we will break that wall down.
“These games are just training exercises and it gives us an opportunity to test one or two of the players in unfamiliar positions, but you still want that winning mentality and that fighting spirit and I think we got a little bit of that tonight.”