Despite over a month of pre-season friendlies, Te Puke Utd open their season on Saturday heading into the unknown.

After winning the Bay 1 title last season, Te Puke will be back playing at federation level in WaiBOP League1 in 2024 - and player-coach Tom Skerten says he feels they are “back where we belong”.

Going into the season, the goal is to retain their place in the league with Tom hoping for a mid-table finish.

“Anything better than that I’ll be stoked,” he says.

Pre-season hasn’t gone well in terms of results, with no wins and one draw, but Te Puke have played Ōtūmoetai, Pāpāmoa and Ngongotahā - all teams from a higher division - as well as Pāpāmoa’s Bay 1 team and Tokoroa, who will also play in League 1.

“The whole plan this pre-season was to play those higher-up teams to get that experience of playing faster football so when we play teams in our league we should be pretty on to it hopefully,” says Tom.

“I’m a little bit worried about not winning a pre-season game, but it’s also about fitness and building that vibe which seems pretty good and we stepped up to a pretty decent [Southern Conference] Pāpāmoa team and nearly came away with a draw.”

Te Puke’s first-team squad has lost some players since last season with injury clouds over several others.

“But we’ve picked up some quite good players and some of the reserves from last year have pushed on into our team as well.

“It could be an interesting season and we are going into the unknown a bit too.”

The first game of the season is a home match against Matamata Swifts.

“They are a club that’s rebuilding and have struggled in recent seasons. They’ve gone up and down a bit, like us, but it seems like they’ve got it back on track now.”

Te Puke lost their place in the WaiBOP Championship, the equivalent of this season’s League 1, two years ago after not being able to guarantee they could field a second men’s side.

Now they have an established a second team and that, plus winning Bay 1, has given them their League 1 place.

“It’s definitely going to be a challenge but for a club like us that’s played in the [federation] leagues [before], it’s good to be back where we belong.”

■ Te Puke Utd play Matamata Swifts at Litt Park on Saturday. Kick-off 3pm.