D-day for Doncaster Rovers players as individual summer workplans are handed out

Today (Tuesday) is the day they return to Cantley Park for the first time since last week's gut-wrenching play-off semi-final defeat to Crewe Alexandra.

Manager Grant McCann and his coaching staff have been busy compiling personalised training plans that the players will take away for the summer. McCann was unhappy with the state of the squad's fitness when he arrived last summer for a second spell at the club.

He says some players "didn't manage themselves properly over the summer" and is determined that the group that returns for pre-season will be ready to hit the ground running as they bid to win promotion next term.

"With the Euros on in Germany it's a bit of a longer break this summer and the players will have plans which were all set in stone anyway, so we'll give them to them on Tuesday," McCann said in the aftermath of Friday's defeat at home to Crewe.

"They've got to stick to the plans. When I came in last summer it was disappointing when we came back from pre-season. Half the group wasn't fit, there were players training with lots of niggles, hence why we had 14, 15 injuries at the time.

"The players will be made very clear that if they aren't fit in the summer they'll be surplus to requirements because there's no way we're going through that and putting our fans through what we saw in the first three or four months of the season.

"Players didn't manage themselves properly over the summer and came back using pre-season trying to get fit. That's what we found with a lot of the group last summer. We didn't have time to get plans to them, we didn't have things already set in stone.

"That's not the way we work.

"We want to make sure when we come back on July 1 - in fact the players will probably be back two weeks prior to that for testing - that everyone's fit and if they're not fit they'll be in (early). They'll know that."