Martin ‘excited’ for season opener

With pre-season concluded, Saints will head to Hillsborough live on Sky Sports, with Martin relishing his first competitive game in charge.

“I’m excited about it,” he began. “Five weeks of hard work and it’s what you work for – this is it. The curtains open, the lights are up, and now it’s time for the guys to step over the white line and put everything into practice that we’ve worked on. So it’s going to be a really interesting challenge for us, a really exciting challenge for us, we’re going to learn so much about the team and the players and I really, really hope we can get off to a really good start and win, it’s as simple as that, and I think the players are ready, or as ready as we can be at this stage, and now I’m just really excited to watch the team play.

“We would’ve loved another week or two and another game or two to implement, but it wasn’t possible with the Premier League finishing late last season and some of the international players we’ve had and all that stuff, so it is what it is.

“There’s no excuses, I feel like we’ve done as well as we possibly can with the time we’ve been given and the players have been amazing in their application and the intensity that they’ve worked at and their level of understanding and the questions they’ve asked, and their conviction and belief in what we’re trying to do as well, so I want them to enjoy what they’re doing and I want them to feel things, feel excited, I want them to feel proud of what they’re doing and feel connected to the supporters and the way we’re going to do things and tomorrow night is an amazing way to do that by starting off and trying to do everything they’ve worked on, to have the courage to implement what they’ve worked on and be the team that we want to be and if they do that, it will be a brilliant first step on the journey that is this season.”

Facing newly promoted opposition, Martin is calling on his players to rise to the challenge in Yorkshire.

“I’m expecting them to be really aggressive and really competitive. I don’t think they have any other choice at home in the first game, so I don’t expect they’ll sit back and allow us to dominate the game, I just don’t think that’s going to be the case. Theyr’e going to try and do that themselves so it will be a really interesting game.

“They have a new manager, have momentum from last season, kept a lot of their squad together so they have a good spirit from what they achieved last season and togetherness, so we have to overcome all of that by being the team we want to be, it’s that simple.

“The amount of fans we have travelling, they deserve that and we owe them that so that means before we do anything we have to be ready to fight, be ready to run for each other and be willing to take the ball, accept the ball and play the way we want to play.”

With a sold out away end heading north for the curtain raiser, Saints’ boss is hoping for a performance to make them proud.

“It's going to be an incredible atmosphere. The fact that so many people are travelling when it’s Friday night, live on Sky with the trains in the state they are in the country at the moment, I think it’s a testament to the supporters here after what they’ve been through last season, I think it’s incredible, I really do.

“We have to go there and give them a performance to be proud of. I think we’ve sold out Plymouth already, the Season Ticket sales are record Season Ticket sales for however long, so it’s amazing, all of that. It adds to our excitement and adds to the level of desire we have to give them, the supporters, a team to be proud of.

“I hope they come away on Friday night feeling proud of their team and what they’ve given them, and that’s my job and is our job whilst we’re here to care for the club like we’ve supported them since we were very young and we’ll give everything we’ve got and hopefully it will be enough for us all to really enjoy a special moment together at the end of it, that’s the whole point, right?”