Former Portsmouth, Blackburn and England coaching expert to put Hawks through pre-season paces

High level sport science and strength and conditioning coach Chris Neville is to offer a helping hand at Westleigh Park to get Paul Doswell's squad up to speed for the new National League South season.

The set up will see Neville, who holds a position as faculty of sport, health and social sciences at Solent University, working with the Hawks every Monday throughout pre-season, with a return planned for June 28.

He'll offer an expert opinion on fitness and performance for the club along with planning sessions for training days he is unable to attend.

Doswell is delighted to be able to call upon the services of someone who was part of England national team as a conditioning coach from 2012-16 this summer.

And the Hawks boss believes it's going to provide both him and his players with an incredible insight throughout pre-season.

Doswell said: ‘We’ve got Chris Neville who is going to work with us. He was England’s strength and conditioning coach from 2012-2016 and at Blackburn and Pompey with Redknapp (Harry).

‘He’s at Solent University and we’re going to work really closely with Solent University this year.

‘Chris is going to come in and give us all his knowledge and work the pre-season with Bairdy (Ian Baird).

‘He’s a strength and conditioning coach so he’ll do all the running, all of the core work, all of the weights but, in the main, all of the running.

‘It allows you to learn more but with all the fitness vests and tracking of the data, he knows every part of that as well, all the specific tests you can do, the CO2 tests we can do at the university.

‘We can tap into all that now and that’s a great thing that’s happened in these last few weeks as well.

‘He’s in every Monday and he’ll give us the sessions to work on the Tuesdays and Thursdays when he’s not here.’

Portsmouth-born Neville started out as strength and conditioning coach with his hometown club in the first of two spells at PO4 prior to moving to LA Galaxy for a short period in 2008.

He returned to Pompey as head of strength and conditioning in 2008 before becoming Blackburn's head of athletic performance - where he mixed his responsibilities with a role in Roy Hodgon's England set up for four years from 2012.

Neville's work with the Hawks comes as part of a close partnership being formed between the club and Solent University.

Hawks will have access to a number of facilities at the university from next season, while intern roles are set to be created at the club for students.