TOWN BOSS Chris Thorman is “thinking outside of the box” to plan effective training sessions when League One rugby returns.

Workington Town return to training for the first time in 12 months on Saturday.

The League One club held a live Facebook Q&A this past weekend and Thorman, Town’s headcoach, gave an insight into how training sessions could look.

He said: “When we start, our training is going to be socially distanced, we’ve got 40 coming including trialists which is significant, we’ve worked really hard to get those numbers. When we arrive for the first two and a half-three weeks, they’ll stay in the same four groups of 10 and that’s basically because of Covid.”

Thorman explained that this strategy would limit the number of people who would need to isolate if a player who had been mixing with everyone tested positive.

The former York City Knights player-coach said that Covid-19 has proven a challenge: “From a rugby league point of view it’s got me thinking outside of the box a little bit. It’s got me thinking about core skills, individual specific improvement areas and it’s probably a good thing that we’re going to be like that for the first couple of weeks.

“Because I think the boys will appreciate that.”

“There’s three stages of training that we’re allowed to do from the RFL’s point of view; Stage One, Stage One Plus and Stage Two.