KEIGHLEY COUGARS start pre-season training this week, with coach Alan Kilshaw keen to get cracking as the countdown to the new-look second tier continues and saying “cohesion and continuity” are the key to his approach.

The Championship and League One are merging into a scheduled 21-club division, with a ten-team play-off competition a possibility and the suggestion that the first round of fixtures will be on the weekend of January 17/18.

That would be significantly earlier than this year, when games in the second tier began in mid-February and in the third the following weekend, and may cause some coaches to rejig their plans for the next few months.

Wary that Keighley’s last match was in August (they finished ninth in a ten-strong League One), Kilshaw, who took over in late March, always had November 3 as the start date for his first pre-season at Cougar Park.

And indeed, he conducted a string of post-season sessions in September, explaining: “We thought it was too early to wind things up, and given I had come in after the start of the games, there were some areas we still wanted to work on and things we wanted to embed a bit more.

“That cohesion and continuity, which are so important, had started to come, and we didn’t want it to fall away.

“With some new signings on board, that work will carry on, and having set the players programmes to follow on their own, it’s not a case of getting them fit in pre-season, but fitter.

“From what we have seen, they are travelling in the right direction on that front, and it will be good to get back to work.”

Kilshaw and three of his backroom staff, Craig McDowell, Danny Burton and Adam Mitchell, formed the Nigeria coaching team for the game against Cumbria at Barrow yesterday (Sunday, November 2).

“It was a different challenge and an enjoyable one,” added ex-Rochdale, Hunslet and Swinton coach Kilshaw.