Curle has 'winced' at challenges during 'exceptionally intense' training sessions

Cobblers boss Keith Curle says the intensity levels in training have been so 'exceptional' that he's found himself 'wincing' at the full-blooded nature of some of the challenges.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, the Cobblers have been training at full throttle to be as physically fit for at least two, and hopefully three, games over the next 12 days.

"The intensity levels in training have been exceptional," said Curle. "Watching some of the challenges, I'm even wincing myself thinking 'wow!' but that's something I encourage.

"What you find is people who show that commitment usually come out of challenges unscathed and we know that so we don't pull out of challenges.

"We're a very, very competitive group of players so training has been very good. We've had five 11 v 11 matches and what we've done is staggered the period of time that we're working with the players.

"We did it the other way so we played the 90 minutes, then we worked down to an hour and now we're working on 45-minute blocks and putting in place the fundamentals of how we want to play the game and restarts will be vitally important.

"How we play is exactly how we train so if you want to play at a high tempo, you've got to train at a high tempo. You can't just switch it on and off."

And that 'intense' training seems to have served the players well ahead of tomorrow's first leg at the PTS.

"Everyone's looking very good," Curle added. "Right from the offset we put a plan together to get to where we wanted to be both physically and mentally with our approach to the game.

"We've identified the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition and every day we've just turned the page of what we need to do, what need to implement with the players and the mindset that we want to them to have.

"Very quickly we've had to put the plan together but we've been working on a two-hour a day programme and we're more than happy with where we're at."