Manager Paul Wotton says the 10-day break between Torquay United friendlies will mean the players can get further down the road to full match fitness before the visit of Plymouth Argyle on Saturday week.
Torquay followed up their first friendly – a goalless draw in the rain at Buckland Athletic last Friday – with a 4-0 win at Tavistock on Wednesday night.
And now the boss is looking forward to a step-up in opponents when Wayne Rooney’s Championship side visit a repainted, refreshed and revitalised Plainmoor on July 27 for what could be a sell-out game.
Talking after the win at Tavistock, Wotton said: “The Plymouth game is 10 days away. That’s on purpose. We wanted that two weeks at the start, to train, for me and Mike Edwards to get into them how we want them to play. Then obviously you have got to play games and the Buckland game and tonight at Tavistock were perfect for us to start.
“But it’s still pre-season and we are nowhere near where I want us to be with fitness levels yet – and on August 10 [the first day of the National League South season} we might not be quite there, fitness levels, but they’ll be working hard.
“Some of them played 90 minutes tonight. They will be in tomorrow and they will be on Friday. We have got to do it that way. It’s too easy to go in there now and say ‘See you Monday boys. It’s pre-season, it’s not a nice time of the year, so we have just got to keep going.”
In a marked contrast to the game at Buckland, where the new Torquay squad worked hard and played well, but couldn’t find the net, the goals began to flow at Southern League Division One side Tavistock, with Brad Ash, Matt Carson and Ben Seymour all on target in the first half. Seymour scored the fourth goal in the second half as Wotton once again made quite a few changes to get most of the players who started on the bench onto the pitch.
Wotton said: “It was a really good workout. The fitness levels came up a little bit from Friday because the boys have worked hard since then. We scored a few goals and moved the ball well at times, a couple of things we have been working on in training, trying to get into the boys, have slowly, slowly come.
“There are miles to go but overall I think we are injury-free and the boys have had really good minutes in their legs against a Tavistock team that played football the right way. All in all, it was a good night for us.”