As Mowden Park prepare to host Heriot's in their first pre-season game on Saturday, we caught up with Shaun Mccartney and Matt Heaton to reflect on pre-season and look ahead to the 2017/18 National One campaign. When asked about their progress so far, Heaton was pleased with how pre-season was going: "Pre-season’s gone pretty well! We’ve got a lot of returning players so there hasn’t really been much of a learning curve for the group. We’re all pretty comfortable in our playing patterns and in our systems."

Heading into their first competitive hit out of pre-season, Mccartney was equally pleased with the squad's progress: "It’s been a good pre-season so far. Everybody’s gelled quite nicely over the last couple of weeks and now everyone’s working off the same song sheet. With that it just means everything’s going smoothly and hopefully we can iron out any kinks after this first game and it will be interesting to see how the team performs."

Saturday's game against Scottish Premiership side Heriot's should provide a tough test for Danny Brown's men, and will be the first of DMP's games with the earlier kick off time of 2pm. Looking forward to Saturday, back-row Heaton added: "We’ve obviously got a few boys in who will be playing their first game for Mowden this coming weekend so it will be really exciting to see how they get on, working with the players we’ve already got. It should all result in an exciting game on Saturday."

Reflecting on a busy summer, Heaton said: "I haven’t really had much of an off-season this year. I’ve been involved in a lot of international stuff with Canada in World Cup Qualifying, so I pretty much finished the season, had 2 weeks in the gym to get fitness levels up and went straight into international duty. I had about a week off on the back of that and then I was straight back into pre-season with Mowden. It’s been a pretty busy summer but the body’s in one piece so everything’s fine going into the season."

After an equally hectic summer, Mccartney was relishing his new role at the club: "Like Matt I haven’t really had much of an off season this summer through injury, but I’ve taken on a new role here at the club as Strength and Conditioning Coach. I’ve been putting the boys through a lot of fitness stuff, a lot of plyometrics and sprint work, as well as obviously all the work in the gym. Everyone’s doing pretty well so far and the numbers are on the up from the first phase of testing to the second, so everything's where it needs to be at this stage.

This week everything’s obviously a little bit lighter with a bit of a de-load week heading into Saturday’s game, and it will be nice to see how what I’ve given the boys will transfer onto the pitch. There’s a couple of boys with little niggles so we’ve had a few specific programmes in there, working with our physio Rob Rudland to help fix any issues they’ve got. It will be interesting to see how the boys progress but at the moment everything’s going pretty smooth and the boys are working hard to get ready for the season."

Saturday's pre-season game comes just 2 weeks before the National One season kicks off at home to Loughborough on Saturday 2nd September, and the boys had already set their sights high for the season to come. Heaton said: "For the season ahead we’ve put down a marker that we want to be in the top 4 at Christmas time. We want to come out and win a lot of our games in that first half of the season and set ourselves up for the second half."

Winger Mccartney echoed the Canadian's ambition: "From Christmas we’ll be looking to assess where we are heading into the rest of the season. We look a lot at our performance behind the scenes and it means we’ve then got good go-forward to improve in the next game. We set ourselves a lot of short term goals throughout the season that contribute to our larger goal which is top 4 by Christmas."

The upcoming game against Heriot's will provide fans a great oportunity to see all of Mowden's existing players, as well as a host of new signings, in action before the season starts in earnest. With adult tickets priced at just £2, head down to the Arena for a 2pm kick off and see the boys in action.

Fans will also be able to purchase their Mowden Memberships on Saturday, with cards available to collect for those who have already joined the Mowden Family. You can find out more about our Mowden Memberships by clicking here or calling us on 01325 350267.