McCormack: Cobblers are 'excited, hungry and eager' ahead of play-off bid

Midfielder Alan McCormack has described the mood in the Cobblers camp as 'hungry, excited and eager' ahead of their League Two play-off semi-final with Cheltenham Town.

Town completed their second week of training at the PTS Academy Stadium on Friday afternoon, which followed 10 weeks of working on their fitness alone at home during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown.

But football is set to resume across England's top four tiers over the next few weeks with the Premier League and Championship to restart their seasons as normal and League One and Two set to play the play-offs only.

With it now less than a week until Cobblers host Cheltenham in the first leg - to be broadcast live on Sky Sports - anticipation and excitement levels among the squad are high.

"It's a huge carrot in front us," said McCormack. "The four teams that are in the play-offs have been given another chance to go and achieve something special this season.

"You start every season wanting to win promotion so to get the chance to do that after what's happened over the last 12, 14 weeks is massive for everyone.

"What I've seen from this group of players since we've come back in is a real hunger. The attitude of everyone and the competitiveness in training has been very, very good.

"I see a group of lads every day that are hungry, eager, excited... and now we're at the countdown stage where we've only got a few training sessions left before the first game and we just can't wait for it to come around."

By the time kick-off comes around next Thursday evening, it will be almost 15 weeks since the Cobblers - or any other team in the country - played a competitive match.

"It's different," admitted McCormack. "You just don't know how you're going to be in that first game when you haven't played any competitive matches for a long, long period of time.

"if you were to say in a normal year that we'd come back into pre-season and then 10 training sessions later, you're going to play a competitive game, you'd be called a bit bonkers I'd think.

"Under normal circumstances, nobody would want to do that or be interested in doing that for the fear of injuries or lack of fitness, but this is a first for everyone and we're all in the same boat.

"Nobody has an advantage because we've all been training for the same amount of time so we've just got to try as best as we can to manage our bodies and give everything for each game."