DIRECTOR of rugby Paul Royston has vowed that the Cougars will be the fittest team in League One this season as they gear up for their opening friendly at the weekend.

Paul March's men travel to Craven Park to face Barrow on Sunday (2pm) as they take the first steps on the road to what they hope will culminate in promotion at the end of the campaign.

Rated as favourites to go up with the bookies, Royston says Keighley – who have named James Feather and Brendon Rawlins as joint-captains – are determined to justify their tag by being the fittest, fastest and leanest team in the third tier.

"Our target has got to be to ensure we are the fittest team in the division because we still feel we should be competing in the league above," he said.

"We certainly haven't lowered our standards since we were relegated and our expectation has been to remain a Championship-standard team.

"We were one of the fittest teams in the Championship when we were in that league and you only have to look at the stats to see how we came back late in a number of games or were competitive in.

"Our fitness has always been good and the goals we have set ourselves are centred on going straight back up. We also see ourselves as favourites to win the League One Cup."

Royston's role behind the scenes should again prove crucial as he works in tandem with March and strength and conditioning coach Adam Mitchell to prepare the players for action.

March has a fully-fit squad to chose from for this weekend's trip to Cumbria and Royston said: "I'm doing the performance director role which I did last year and am overseeing everything we are trying to do at the club.

"With Marchy's role being player-coach, you need that additional support on the management structure as much as anything else. This allows Marchy to fulfil his coaching role and also helps to take the pressure off him on match days.

"We have a lot of senior players and David March coming on board has been brilliant for us because he has really got stuck in. He's going to be a valuable asset and you can see that.

"No disrespect to Hunslet, but we've already got him doing stuff that he hasn't done for some time.

"You can just see that level of ability and the likes of Danny Jones and James Feather, who we are moving into an assistant player-coach role, is great for the squad.

"We've kept the bulk of the squad and everyone knows the systems we want to play. We've really looked sharp in the drills we have been doing and Marchy is happy with how the players are shaping up."

Royston, owner of Workout's gyms in Keighley and Shipley, says the club have benefited from switching their training base from UAK (University Academy Keighley) to Beckfoot School in Bingley this year.

He explained: "The change of training base this year has seen us move to Beckfoot School in Bingley, which has a 3G pitch, a gym and a classroom which we use as a video room and a meeting point.

"It means we can do everything at one training base, which has raised the professionalism of what we're doing.

"We were previously training at UAK in Keighley but then we had to go to Cougar Park to do the additional gym work.

"That disrupted the sessions but now we've got our own facility, which has been excellent, and Beckfoot School have been really supportive of us.

"Adam Mitchell has done a lot of work on the strength and conditioning side and Marchy has done the aspects of field work we wanted to do.

"We've gone through the usual phases of building up the players' size and strength and now, as the first friendly approaches, we are moving on to power.

"We're monitoring the players in terms of their body fat as they build overall fitness and power. The boys are raring to go on Sunday now."

Meanwhile, the Cougars have announced that Great Britain legend Garry Schofield will be their pre and post-match speaker this season from March 1.