Mike Jones says the “torture” of missing key stages of last season with injury has fired him up to make the most of 2017/18 with Carlisle United.

The influential midfielder has made his long-awaited comeback in pre-season and had his first friendly outing at Blyth Spartans last weekend.

The 29-year-old could now get a further outing at FC Halifax Town tomorrow (The Shay, 3pm) in the Blues’ penultimate warm-up game.

With the battle for places in Keith Curle’s team for the August 5 opener against Swindon stepping up, Jones’ involvement is timely.

The former Oldham and Bury man said: “It felt really good to be back last weekend. I felt strong. I didn’t feel my ankle that much, so it was good to get through that 45 minutes. Now it’s about getting that sharpness against better opposition and I’ll be ready to go.

“It’s been horrible. Torture. I hate being injured and it’s probably the longest injury I’ve had. Seeing the way it went for the boys in the second half of the season and the play-offs, and not being able to do much about it, was tough.

“It gives me the hunger this year to put it right, to do everything I can and even more so than last year to make sure we do get the job done this time.”

Jones quickly established himself as one of Carlisle’s key players last season until an injury last December at Luton ruled him out for nearly two months.

His comeback then lasted little more than a month before a challenge against Cambridge ended his season.

Manager Curle has since added competition in midfield with the signing of Kelvin Etuhu.

Jones has spent much of the summer building up his fitness in a bid to make a fresh start for the new campaign.

That included the use of an Alter-G anti-gravity running machine at Bolton University, with the help of former Oldham physio Jon Guy.

“There was a lot of frustration for me and you do take it home a bit,” said Jones. “It’s not nice on the family, sometimes. You get paid to go out there and play football and, when you can’t, it’s very frustrating.

“Fingers crossed this year I can stay injury-free and do everything I can to help us get promoted. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff since April and worked pretty much straight through. I do feel the fitness is there, I feel powerful and fit, but there’s nothing like being out there on the pitch against whatever opposition.

“You can’t do any kind of running that will reproduce that. I feel like I can get back to where I was at the start of last season, if not past that, because I did feel really strong then.”

Jones believes Carlisle will be capable of another promotion challenge provided they become harder to score against.

“We know what we need to work on,” he said. “We’ve got goals in the team. We just need to be that bit more solid. If we can do that, 100 per cent we’ll be thereabouts.”

Jones and the United squad are currently staying at Mottram Hall in Cheshire on a team-bonding trip, having been to the Cassius Camps outdoor training centre near Windermere on Monday and Tuesday.

One of the club’s recent trialist strikers remained with the squad for the Lake District trip but some others are understood to have moved on.

Curle, meanwhile, is weighing up whether John O’Sullivan and Jason Kennedy will be ready for a return to action after injury and illness.

Halifax could tomorrow include new striker Ben Tomlinson, who spent the last two months of last season with the Blues.