The mile king of 2025 ... and details of Rotherham United's brutal pre-season fitness sessions

Summer signing Kian Spence was the fastest man of the class of 2025/26 when the players returned for pre-season training last week, scorching round the track to post a time of four minutes 56 seconds in the Roundwood Mile.

That made the 24-year-old only the second man to ever break the five-minute barrier and manager Matt Hamshaw was straight on the phone to the quickest of all time, Matt Crooks.

“I texted Crooksy and said we'd got somebody to nearly beat him,” the boss grinned. “You know what Crooksy is like - he said that if Kian had set a new best time, he'd have come back and had another go himself!”

Crooks, who left for Middlesbrough four years ago and now plays for Hull City, finished in 4:48 back in 2021 and actually delayed his move to the Riverside Stadium by a couple of days so that he could write his name in the Rotherham history books.

The Roundwood Mile was a feature of pre-season during the managerial reign of Paul Warne, when Hamshaw was a coach, but was scrapped by Warne's predecessor, Matt Taylor.

Hamshaw has wasted no time in bringing it back, and overseeing events is Ross Burbeary, the take-no-prisoners fitness taskmaster of old who has just returned to the club after spells at Lincoln City, Derby County and Huddersfield Town.

The players ended their off-season break last Thursday and are in the early stages of a summer of sweat as the push to improve conditioning levels among the squad gets under way.

“It's tough,” Hamshaw said. “Ross is loving it!”

On Saturday, the players had an afternoon workout of four one-kilometre runs following a morning football session. Then, on Monday, they did box-to-box runs, pressing work and 10 x 100 metres in the morning and 5 x 800m in the afternoon.

“I'm not going to make any bones about it, we need to be fitter,” said Hamshaw who took charge last term when there were only eight matches left to play.

“The lads are putting the effort in. I've held a meeting about standards and no excuses. It's all about representing the badge; putting your kit the right way, just little things that might not seem a lot to some people but are big for us.

“I want to develop a culture of respect and go back to how we had it before really.

“I would have liked Ross to have come in at the time when I got those eight games. We could have given the players a proper programme then. It ended up being a bit ‘bitty’, which I didn't like. We'll get there, we'll be as fit as we should be.”

Meanwhile, second in the mile rankings this year is Reece James, a creditable effort from a player who turned 31 last November.

“We try to get the lads between five and five-and-a-half minutes,” Hamshaw said. “Most of them achieve it.”