Otley's Gary Walker realistic for new season

Otley finished 12th last season

Otley's director of rugby Gary Walker says he will not set unrealistic targets for the new season.

Otley finished 12th in National League One last season on 63 points, but Walker will not put pressure on his young side to finish higher this year.

Walker told BBC Radio Leeds: "We don't set anything that's unrealistic as that becomes fatal.

"What we have targeted is to do better than last season in terms of points on the board and then take it from there."

In his first season at Cross Green Walker was charged with turning around a club that had been relegated from the Championship and had a serious shortage of players due to financial problems.

After spending most of the season at the wrong end of the table, a run of four wins from their last five matches saw Otley avoid relegation in style.

Walker is keen to build on that progress, but knows his side face another tough season, which starts on Saturday, 4 September at home to Blaydon.

"All the teams in National League One have strengthened. We have strengthened in the forwards in particular and feel we will have a more competitive pack now," explained Walker.

"What we have done is split the 30 games into five-match blocks. So as the season develops and we get a bit more information on the other teams we can then alter our overall targets accordingly.

"Last season we didn't have much time to arrange a full pre-season, so this time around we made sure in our planning we had three games of the right standard and I think these games will stand us in good stead for the season.

"We played Bradford & Bingley in our first game and we got everything we wanted out of that game and was a great work out.

"We will now step up the intensity on Saturday against Doncaster to see how we cope against a Championship side. Then we finish against one of the better sides in National League Two in Hull Ionians.

"As well as those games our captain Howard Parr, who is a squadron leader in the RAF, has arranged a team-building day.

"So we've also put that into our pre-season programme and are happy with everything we are doing."