Newcastle United have trained as a group for the first time since March.
With the club's Benton base bathed in sunshine, Steve Bruce and his coaching staff ran the rule over players in a small practice match as United reached phase two of Project Restart.
Top-flight clubs now hope to get the green light to return to action behind closed doors in the middle of next month.
The sight of Newcastle players returning to the pitch has pre-season feel to it after over two months of no action.
Club doctor, Paul Catterson, told the Chronicle: "People have mentioned pre-season many times.
"The manager has mentioned the fact it has been longer than a normal closed season.
"My main worry is about the contact training we're going to have.
"We don't want an explosion of injuries in the matches we are about to have.
"We have to try to make the players as robust as possible.
"It does have a pre-season feel to it, maybe because the sunshine is with us.
"The players are having to work hard.
"But it's not a normal pre-season.
"Once we get up and going with the contact part of training it'll feel normal again."
Dr Catterson has already been working hand in hand with German counterparts on how to minimise the return to training after such a long time out.
He said: "In the first weekend they had six injuries in nine games.
"There were a lot of muscle injuries in the first weekend."
United are likely to be helped by the option of using five subs in games after FIFA relaxed the rule book.
Catterson said: "More substitutions will help us massively.
"There would be a tactical nature to that as well.
"We have a full squad now available to the manager and long may that continue."
