AFTER missing the entire Newport County AFC pre-season campaign last year thanks to the combined joys of covering Euro 2016, getting married and jetting off on honeymoon I’d forgotten how frustrating summer friendlies can be.

Last week’s trips to Chippenham, Merthyr and Evesham were my first pre-season matches since a forgettable 2-2 draw at Weston-super-Mare during Terry Butcher’s brief reign in July 2015.

But my beef with pre-season goes back a further 12 months when I missed Germany’s historic 7-1 humbling of hosts Brazil in their 2014 World Cup semi-final because I was covering County’s another friendly victory for County at Evesham.

As far as friendlies go, my heart has never really been in it since then and this year’s matches have not changed my mind.

Thankfully I missed the Exiles’ trip to Undy the other week as I was away celebrating my first anniversary.

My colleague David Williams got the short straw and on arrival at The Causeway he was handed a frankly farcical team sheet with captain Jamie Turley named alongside Trialist 1, Trialist 2, Trialist 3, Trialist 4 and so on (below).

A few of the trialists – Jamie Bird, Jermaine Easter and Kaid Mohamed – were identified but the team sheet was about as much use as double-sided playing cards or glow in the dark sunglasses.

Ex-Arsenal man Sanchez Watt and former County midfielder Ben Swallow were easy to spot at Chippenham but last Wednesday’s trip to Merthyr proved rather more difficult to report on.

The still unidentified ‘Trialist 2’ opened the scoring for a County XI made up of four trialists and seven youth team players.

To their credit the Exiles had made their intentions for the game clear beforehand and Merthyr were also running a welcome ‘pay what you want’ scheme on the night.

But anyone attending the match hoping to gauge how the Exiles first team is shaping up for the new League Two season would have been sorely disappointed.

And with County declining the invitation to name any of the trialists it made life very difficult for those of us in the press box.

South Wales Argus:

Michael Flynn returned from his UEFA Pro Licence studies trip to Portugal to oversee Saturday’s friendly against Gloucester City and again there were four trialists in action for the visitors.

Swallow was joined by a left-back who also played at Chippenham and a left winger who may well have done, as well as a striker believed to be ex-Cambridge United man Ben Williamson.

Flynn was happy to discuss Swallow but declined to give any details on the other three for fear of tipping off rival clubs about their availability.

That cautious approach is perhaps understandable from the manager’s point of view.

But supporters who travel to these friendlies at their own expense and pay their money at the turnstiles want to know who they are watching and rightly so.

And those that can’t make it want to read about friendlies in as much detail as possible in the media.

The names of all players who are released every summer are circulated to every club up and down the country.

And any player worth his salt at this level has an agent who will certainly not be shy about contacting as many clubs as possible at this time of year to offer his client’s services.

If football clubs are so paranoid about tipping off rivals – and County are by no means the only offenders – then why bother with pre-season friendlies at all?

I’ve lost count of the number of managers who have told me, both on and off the record, how much they hate friendlies and that they can’t wait for the real action to start.

The main reason for that is injuries and the Exiles lost Lenell John-Lewis for almost the whole campaign after he picked up a seriously damaged his knee at Caldicot last summer.

And fellow striker Marlon Jackson is in danger of missing the start of the League Two campaign with a hamstring problem picked up at the weekend.

So why not just scrap pre-season friendlies all together?

Fans and reporters would not miss them. I can list the number of memorable pre-season friendlies I’ve witnessed on the fingers of Jaime Lannister’s sword hand in Game of Thrones.

Players have to get fit and managers want to look at potential signings so why not just hold behind-closed-doors matches and let the fans save their time and money for the real action in August?