'It's great to be back!' - Skipper Goode excited to be training again

Charlie Goode was back in training on Monday morning.

Cobblers captain Charlie Goode declared it was 'great to be back' after completing his first training session since the League Two season was suspended in mid-March.

After nearly three months of training alone at home, Goode was part of the first group to be called into the ground this morning as he trained alongside the likes of Joe Martin, Reece Hall-Johnson and Jay Williams at the PTS Academy Stadium.

"It's great to be back," said the 24-year-old. "We're in groups of five at the moment so we're not seeing all of the lads just yet but it's fantastic to be back. We've been doing a lot of hard work and the preparation starts now.

"I think for the first two or three weeks, after we first stopped playing, we were waiting for the call to get straight back in at any moment but then six, seven weeks passed and nothing had happened.

"We've now finally got a date to come back in and the play-offs look like going ahead so all the lads are buzzing and now we're just raring to go to finish what we started."

It had looked like the season would be cancelled altogether, robbing Cobblers of their promotion opportunity, but clubs in League Two agreed to keep the play-offs when they met two weeks ago.

"We didn't get any good news for a long time during lockdown but then the news of the play-offs dropped and it was a bit unexpected," admits Goode.

"We've got a big group chat between us and the lads were so excited. We've done so much hard work this season and now we want to finish it off because we don't want to just make up the numbers in the play-offs, we want to win them.

"At the moment it's just about getting out fitness up, getting into the swing of things and hopefully soon we can get back into full contact and we'll get a feel for 11 v 11 because that's how you really get your fitness back.

"As soon as we do that, the momentum will start building for the big games we've got. No one has ever been in this situation before so it's a strange feeling - it almost felt like pre-season coming in today - but we only have three games so we have to make sure we're match sharp and we give it our best shot."