Sunderland Ladies have returned to training, currently being put through their paces in pre-season ahead of the new FAWSL campaign.
Their first session back was on Monday, with their domestic season to begin in March - first with an FA Women's Cup fifth round tie and then the new WSL 1 season.
The Lady Black Cats will be looking to reap all the rewards of training in the next two months too, as they have some expectations to live up to after defying all of them in 2015 with a fourth placed finish in their debut top flight campaign.
Fairweather happy to be back
Speaking to Sunderland's official website, manager Carlton Fairweather spoke about how excited he is to be back with his team, preparing for the new season.
"I love the day-to-day routine," he said. He has missed the "coaching" and "watching the players develop and learn," two aspects of being a manager he said that he "love[s]" and "get[s] a great kick out of."
"It's very satisfying to see [the progress]" in the players he said, and now he is hopeful coaching the team into achieving "a similar position next season" as to that which they managed to clinch last year.
To do this though, "the objective" has to be to "compete and compete well," both "when [they] train and play" in order to get back accustomed to the levels they need to be at for the new season.
Just training, for now
With less than two months until the 2016 campaign kicks off, it may come as a surprise that Sunderland have yet to arrange any pre-season friendlies to ease them back into the swing of things.
However, it's still early days, with training also in its early stages - being "nice and light" in order to "familiarise" the players with things again.
"It's a big relief," just in itself, "to be back training and playing again," says Fairweather, with a big season coming up.