POOLE Town boss Tom Killick has a slightly different conundrum this pre-season – revealing that his side might have slightly overbooked their schedule in terms of friendlies.

Dolphins began their pre-season campaign with two wins in two days, with a mixture of first-team players and youth recording victories over Hamworthy Recreation (4-3) and Swanage & Herston (5-1).

Killick's charges are in action this evening away at Southern League returnees Bashley, with kick-off 7.45pm at the GlenMex Stadium.

With 25 days remaining until the start of the competitive season, Killick looked to fill an empty slot on the final weekend of July in order to boost his side’s preparations.

As most local sides had either already found opponents for the Saturday, the BlackGold Stadium stalwart looked for matches either side of the weekend.

Speaking about the ordeal to pencil in friendlies, Killick told the Daily Echo: “We wanted to make sure we did have enough games.

“We're in a tricky situation, really, because we didn't have a fixture for the 30th (Saturday, July 30), which was fairly crucial the week before the start of the season.

“We then were scrambling around a little bit and we were fortunate enough to find a game on the Thursday, and we were going to leave it at that.

“That wouldn't be too bad, we'd have just a week and a bit to prepare.

“That’s away at Bemerton (Heath Harlequins).

“And then Hamworthy United offered us a chance of playing them on the Monday.

“Then also, because I didn't have a fixture that weekend, I was sort of a bit worried.

“We’ve got a game against Shaftesbury put in and then Bournemouth offered to play us.

“So we’ve probably got one or two more games than is perhaps ideal, but we’ve got some good young lads, so we can always organize things.”

Killick’s desire to fill out his pre-season with multiple games stems from a hope of improving on Poole’s lacklustre campaign last term.

“Our objective really is we know that everything we do has to be a little bit better than last year,” restarted the former non-league player of the year.

“So we're hoping the way we're training this pre-season, we’re just up a bit from what we were last year coming into pre-season fixtures, we just want to perhaps, again, be a little bit up in terms of our levels and what we're doing in terms of games, minutes, just to try and be better at everything, which is what we have talked about is needed.

“It's not just about the additional personnel, that’s not some silver bullet, it's about doing and being better in all the other elements.

“So that's what we're trying to do hopefully. We've got quite a lot of games, we just need to do what we can to be improved all round.”