Pre-season training isn't what it used to be. Players have programmes to follow during the summer and return four-six weeks later close to the peak condition they were in when they departed for the sun-kissed beaches.

Yesteryear, alcohol dwarfed sun lotion on footballers' holidays in the flowing scales. It was time to indulge and enjoy after slugging away on cabbage patch pitches and sharing the claustrophobic dressing rooms which reaked of liniment with colleagues for nine months.

And then they returned to reality. Not like now, Britain once enjoyed balmy summers and the hosepipe would be banned with credence, and whereas the public bathed in paradise, footballers returned to hell.

Running hell. Tales of cross-country circuits to run players back into shape are ubiquitous on the after-dinner circuit with old pros, which makes you wonder what the banal personalities of 21st century football will have to offer decades from now. Not that they'll need to grab a microphone and regale their audience...

So in tribute to those heroes who would run miles and then neck blackcurrent and lemonade to raise their glucose levels at the pub, here are some wonderful pre-season snapshots from the archives...

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  • Arsenal goalkeeper Jack Kelsey stops an incredible six shots simultaneously in 1960

  • Orient's Stan Bowles (top) leapfrogs teammate Ian Moores, 1980

  • Liverpool's Tony Hateley and Ron Yeats chat in 1967

  • Arsenal manager Billy Wright surveys his squad for the 1962-63 season

  • Port Vale's new general manager Sir Stanley Matthews, 1965

  • Ray Wilkins, Chelsea captain, aged 18 in 1975

  • New Millwall signing Derek Possee is given a ride on a children's roundabout, near Millwall's practice pitch at Eltham, by his team-mates, (front to back), goalkeeper Lawrie Leslie, Keith Weller and forward William Neil, 1967

  • Charlton Athletic players, left to right, Jack Kennedy, Len Glover, Roy Matthews and Brian Kinsey, training for the new season at The Valley, 1965

  • Fulham's Tony Macedo hitting out with a cricket bat , 1967

  • Jimmy Greaves (centre) training at Cheshunt with Tottenham, 1962

  • Arsenal captain Frank McLintock, 1968

  • Manchester United new team 'Boss' Wilf McGuinness (foreground right) is pictured with the players at their training headquarters in Salford, Lancashire in 1969

  • Bobby Charlton (tracksuit), gets in some pre-season training with his Preston players, 1975

  • Phil Thompson's nose-dive, 1975

  • Matt Busby, Jimmy Murphy and Jack Crompton. Manchester United's Holy Coaching Trinity, 1961

  • Charlton Athletic footballer Brian Kinsey is head-over-heels in 1965

  • Arsenal's Welsh international Mel Charles has a rest , 1961

  • The pristine Bobby Moore, 1961

  • QPR goalkeeper Frank Smith training at White City Stadium, 1962

  • Charlton Athletic players, Ray Treacy and Peter Reeves jumping over their team mates, from left, Paul Went, Dick Plumb, and Graham Moore, 1971

  • Mark Lazarus, right, and Roy Bentley of QPR , 1962

  • Danny Blanchflower, the Tottenham Hotspur captain, has company for the FA Cup, 1962

  • Paul Gascoigne plays hide-and-seek poorly with Rangers in 1995