Radford warns Hull players of hard pre-season

Hull FC head coach Lee Radford says his players are in for a tough first week of pre-season. The Black and Whites get their 2020 preparations off and underway on Monday as they aim to improve on their sixth-place finish from 2019 – when they missed out on a play-off spot by points difference. Hull FC also reached the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup before they were ultimately undone by Warrington Wolves at the University of Bolton Stadium. Some players will not be reporting back due to national team commitments. However, Radford is expecting around 23 players to turn up on Monday and says he will be working his squad hard. “We’ll be straight in head first,” he told Hull Live. “We’ll have some meetings early on, some dos and don’ts of the training ground and some introductions of the new playing group and I know Adam (Pearson, club chairman) is going to speak to the group as well. From there, there’ll be weights, some conditioning and some skill in there as well. “I’m looking forward to it, I love pre-season, it’s the time of the year when you can some coaching done and there’s no pressure of a result at the weekend. You can spend plenty of time on the field because there’s no game to prepare for, or to recover from.”