DANNY McGee says he is confident of success for his Keighley side this season following an encouraging summer.

The Keighley head coach says despite a lot of changes to the squad during pre-season they have prepared well for the opening game of the new Yorkshire One season, at home to Bradford Salem on Saturday, September 7.

These preparations included finishing third in the fifth annual 'Skiptens' Tens' Tournament last weekend.

Six teams, Keighley, Bradford & Bingley, Baildon, Skipton, Cleckheaton and Nomads, a team made of Skipton second team players and their friends and colleagues, took part in the competition which was played in a round-robin format.

Bradford & Bingley topped the table, Baildon came second and Keighley were third. Skipton finished fourth, Nomads were fifth and Cleckheaton came sixth.

Keighley will hold two home live training sessions over the next two successive Thursdays. They will welcome Old Grovians tonight and Bradford & Bingley the following Thursday (August 22).

The sessions will give Keighley a chance to practice lineouts and scrums for 10 to 15-minute sessions. It will give McGee and his opposing coaches the chance to stop sessions and offer pointers to the players that they would not get the chance to during friendly matches.

But Keighley will then step up their pre-season preparations with a friendly clash at West Park Leeds on Thursday, August 29.

McGee said: "Our first game against Bradford Salem will have a bit of everything; emotions and bite between the two teams. They hammered us this time last year at our place but we beat them towards the end of the season.

"I'm really positive about the season. I couldn't ask any more from the players, the lads have responded really well. We have been up on the Moors training and we've been doing video analysis.

"Hopefully we will improve on last year. I'm confident as I'm as pleased as I could have been after pre-season. But you don't know how the season is going to go until you start playing games.

"At the Skipton tournament we had a really god mixture of first, second and third team players. It was part of the programme building that momentum for the new season.

"It's good for the lads to get contact in and play rugby. We have had a really good turnout for training, with 30 to 35 lads taking part."