Wendron United manager Jack Greenwood was pleased with what he saw after his side played their first football match for nearly five months.

Greenwood’s first team emerged 3-2 winners in their opening pre-season friendly against their second team, managed by Josh McDonald, on Sunday.

It was the first opportunity for him to see his players in match action since their last game, a 4-0 victory at home to Callington Town on March 7 – their final game of the 2019/20 season some 148 days earlier.

Football, along with almost all aspects of society, was suspended a few days later as the country went into lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak, with competitive football finally returning on Saturday.

IN PICTURES: Wendron United return to action with intra-club pre-season friendly

Despite the long stretch of time between matches and the little amount of training done so far, Greenwood was happy with his side’s efforts on Sunday.

He said: “You look at when the Premier League started, it wasn’t at the same pace as it is now and the FA Cup Final [between Chelsea and Arsenal on Saturday] was a good game, but those first few games back for everyone were very slow, and we’re obviously not professional athletes.

“I think everyone expects to pick it straight back up where they left off, but these lads won’t ever have gone so long without playing football from the moment they started.

“It wasn’t as if we were playing week-in, week-out before that, there were only two or three games between Christmas and the lockdown anyway.

“I’m quite happy with what I saw [today]. We moved the ball well, we tried really hard, we looked relatively sharp and obviously as the game went on we tired but overall I was very impressed. A few players stood out and I think it was a good run out.

“It’s quite nice when you can do it against your second team like that and be in control of everything and not be too competitive, but a good starter for ten for everyone.”

With the new South West Peninsula League season due to start on September 5 – provided the current ban on spectators attending matches in the National League System is overturned – it means there will be just 34 days between the Dron’s first run out in several months and their first match of the season.

And with Wendron due to play 15 times in the first eight weeks of the season as league secretaries try to make up for lost time, Greenwood knows he needs his squad to get up to speed quickly.

“Ultimately we’ve just got to hit the ground running as quickly as possible,” he said. “One thing that hasn’t been great is the amount of time between getting back to it and being allowed to train properly and the restart of the league.

“The pre-season is condensed. We’re expecting the players to be fully up to speed straight away, they’re expecting that of themselves as well.

“We just need to get in as many games and as much training as possible and the lads need to look after themselves, but as a start today I thought it was very good.”