Shrewsbury Town prepare by chilling out

The Town squad, aside from those recovering from injury such as captain Ollie Norburn, have been instructed to do as little as possible for up to a fortnight during the lockdown period.

Sam Ricketts and his staff will then tell players to work on a mixture of short and long-distance and high and low intensity running before the scheduled May 16 return at Sundorne Castle.

The manager explained that Town are treating the period like a summer break, managing exercise levels to ensure players are in the best health possible.

“The players are just having a physical and mental break, albeit they can’t get away,” Ricketts said. “There is 10 days up to two weeks of nothing at all really. Obviously (they can) go for a walk or bits and pieces like that.

“But it’s letting joints and muscles have a week to two of no real pounding loads.

“Before and after that you’re doing work, runs, all different types of runs, long runs, 5kms, half an hour runs, or the shorter kilometres high-speed running or even shorter. We’re just trying to cover all aspects as best we can.

“We’ll gear it up like in any off-season. The players will be expected to do a certain amount of work by themselves so when they do come in we’re not starting at zero, we’re well on the way with the physicality and robustness.”

Ricketts feels that should the date for players to return to training be continuously pushed back, the likely outcome will be a cancellation of the league season.

He said: “The longer it goes on if we can’t get into training then the more likely is that the season will finish.”