Russell Martin admits the significant amount of travelling required during the Championship season was a key factor in Swansea City's decision to play most of their pre-season fixtures behind closed doors.
The Swans will travel a total of 9,930 miles for their 23 away league matches this season, the most of any side in the second tier while their trip to Sunderland on Saturday, January 14, is the longest journey set to be made next term, with a round trip between the two clubs being a staggering 696 miles.
In addition to those concerns, the Swansea.com Stadium was unavailable for use this summer following the Elton John concert at the home of the Swans on June 29.
As a result, Swansea played Haverfordwest County, Colchester United and Forest Green Rovers at their Fairwood training base before facing Plymouth Argyle at Home Park on Tuesday night in what was the first of only two games in front of fans this summer.
They are behind closed doors in Swansea once again this weekend as they host Bristol Rovers before rounding off their summer schedule at Charlton Athletic on Saturday, July 23, where supporters will be permitted to attend.
And Russell Martin has revealed he felt the excitement when seeing the 291 Jacks who travelled to Plymouth earlier this week. "I was speaking to a few of the guys when we turned up on the bus, seeing fans and we thought 'it's back now'. There's a bit of a buzz," he told SwansTV.
"The behind-closed-doors fixtures serve a purpose for a couple of reasons really. Our pitch isn't ready at the Swansea.com Stadium.
"We don't want to do a huge amount of travelling in pre-season because we've got to do a hell of a lot of during the season anyway. We've got two away games [this summer] where we have to travel and get into the flow of that again, but we don't want to do too much of that in pre-season because it's physically very demanding.
"We have some brilliant pitches at Fairwood that we can use, we can experiment and really have a look at things, so they really serve a purpose.
"But you can't replicate it with crowds. Charlton will be good for us as well. We have one before that against Bristol Rovers."
Swansea have little more than a fortnight to go until they travel to Rotherham United for the opening day of the new campaign. New signings Harry Darling, Nathan Wood and Matty Sorinola have all had game-time this summer while the injured duo of Joe Allen and Ben Cabango are edging closer towards being available.
And head coach Martin believes Swansea are far better placed now that they were at the same stage last year. "I just think we've got to be relentless in the pursuit for us to improve on last season, it's really that simple," he said.
"We are already in a better place than we were at this time last season when we weren't even here. Physically the players are definitely in a better place than they were last season I think in terms of conditioning for us and for how we want to play.
"So on the whole, we're really pleased with where we're at, but at the same time we're aware there's a lot of work to be done."
Travel data courtesy of The Stats Zone.
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