With gleaming suntans and sharp holiday haircuts, City reassembled this week to start all over again.

It was a picture mirrored all over the country as pre-season training began in earnest. Some had kicked off earlier – Doncaster Rovers and David Syers went back to work the previous Monday – but his former team had deserved their precious extra time off.

Just over six weeks earlier, they had owned Northampton on Wembley’s lush turf. Now all roads point forward to League One and the fast-advancing tasty opener at Bristol City.

The scene at Apperley Bridge was a reassuringly familiar one – very familiar, in fact, because of the settled nature of the squad that Phil Parkinson has built up.

After year upon year of ripping up and starting again, City’s summer transfer strategy is more tinker and improve. In the words of the manager, there’s “not a lot to be done”.

It was a strange scenario to pop down there so early into the pre-season and recognise every single player.

Jason Kennedy was the only new face – the ink on his two-year contract had dried barely 20 minutes earlier – but otherwise it was as you were from those last seen galavanting around the national stadium.

Mark Yeates came on board 24 hours later but the absence of a single trialist in the first few days must be some kind of record.

It has become a matter of course that the numbers being put through those early paces would be significantly beefed up by several “who’s that over there” hopefuls.

That’s not to say that Parkinson will not choose to run the rule over anyone chasing a contract before the Ashton Gate game comes around. He struck gold last summer when he invited Carl McHugh, a young defender just bombed from Reading, to tag along for the week in his native Ireland.

Who could possibly have thought that the Irish teenager would end up playing in a major cup final for the club six months later?

But for every McHugh and Syers – the one major plus of Peter Taylor’s inauspicious Valley Parade reign – there are names that are forgotten as quickly as they have been Googled.

City fans with good memories might just recall the likes of Chris Simm, Lee Morris and Matthew Tipton getting their 15 minutes of friendly fame in Taylor’s pre-season hunt for a striker that ended with Jake Speight.

But what about goalkeeper Mark Howard? Or Danny Kerr, Shaun Densmore and Kris Gate?

With the greatest respect to those last three players who were once given the once-over by Stuart McCall, would anyone seriously remember their “blink and you miss it” appearances at Rawdon Meadows?

Every team churns through the wannabes, with more and more each season thrown on “the lorry”, as Taylor described the list of players without a contract. It can be an undignified scramble just to find somewhere/anywhere to keep on playing.

The sheer numbers turning up in hope at City every July highlighted the increasingly flaky nature of the squad after yet another season of underachievement and disappointment.

This year could not be more different. There are foundations in place – built on stone with the likes of Andrew Davies, Gary Jones and now Nathan Doyle again.

The training pitch no longer resembles the cast of Ben Hur. It’s a tight, compact group – a group familiar with each other and familiar with winning.

And that, for hardened Bradford City watchers, is a sight for sore eyes.