Hartlepool United manager Dave Challinor outlines prospective plans regarding club training and furlough schemes

All remaining Hartlepool players and staff have been on the Government’s furlough scheme since April while others were made redundant following the shut down of the 2019-20 National League campaign due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Without any revenue being generated at the club, operations at Victoria Park have had to be put on hold.

While Pools have no exact start date for when they will be able to resume, Challinor is hoping a provisional suggested restart around September will help get the ball rolling once again.

“It’s been pretty quiet, to be honest, I suppose now we’ve got a little bit more clarity as to where we might be at and when football might be able to resume,” said the Hartlepool manager.

“Things can start moving forward a little bit but obviously there is still quite a lot of uncertainty around what is going on.”

Challinor has been unable to execute his plans for the upcoming season due to the lack of certainty surrounding Hartlepool and football in general. The club is yet to officially announce any new signings or contract extensions since its retained list was published back in May.

But the Hartlepool manager is hoping to change things from this week as the club prepares to take a step closer to normality.

“At the moment, people are still on furlough but I think that will change soon,” the 44-year-old added.

“From July 1, there’s the potential of bringing people back in part-time and I think things will change then.

“Then we’ve been told to plan for a September start so we can’t do anything more than that at the moment.

“That will mean we’ll look to be back in training, whether it’s a part-time basis to start with midway through July and have an extended pre-season, probably pretty low contact time early on.

“Then when we get more clarity over a definitive start date then we’ll start increasing it from there.”