Cape Town - Highlands Park coach Owen Da Gama says the club are back in pre-season but it will be behind closed doors in order for there to be no distractions from the media.

The Lions of the North have already reported back to prepare for the 2019/20 campaign and it appears all the players have returned in good condition from their holidays.

Highlands enjoyed a solid return to the Premiership last season from the National First Division as they finished in a creditable seventh to qualify for the MTN8.

Da Gama told Kickoff: "It was good, everybody was here who was supposed to be here.

"Only the two players who have gone to AFCON, the two Namibians Denzel Haoseb and Peter Shalulile (were absent). But everybody was on time and everybody was in training. Ja so it's a good start. The new boys (Rodney) Ramagalela and (Marks) Munyai were very good, fitted in very well."

When asked about welcoming any potential trialists during the initial part of pre-season, he concluded: "Not at this stage hey, not at this stage. We are going into camp so when we come back maybe we'll look at players in June, but not now.

"I think it's very private you know (the camp) otherwise people come there and start disturbing the players and all that so it's very private where we are going, because people come and they want articles and they want photos.

"We don't want the boys to be disturbed when we are doing pre-season. We are planning to work on team-building, working on fitness, working on ball touches, learning to know each other well, making the team to gel as a team, simple as that.

"It's team-building. We will just play amongst each other. This is the first phase then in the second camp, we will then arrange friendlies and so on. Now we are just preparing the boys physically, and they are getting to touch a lot of the ball."