The Welsh international collapsed within the first ten minutes of our Championship play-off final win at Wembley Stadium in May and Lockyer was delighted to return to action.

“Tough, really tough,” said Lockyer after completing his first full match of pre-season. “It’s been a different pre-season for myself, a weird one to be honest. I keep getting told that I’m a couple of weeks behind and that doesn’t sit right with me, I want to be up with the lads so to get that first 90 minutes in is a good feeling and I know it’s in the locker now.

“When the lads start running in the off-season to get ready for pre-season, I wasn’t allowed to do too much. I was only allowed to do a couple of 5k’s just to see where I was at, but when the other lads are doing their own stuff, they are doing sprints and box-to-boxes which I wasn’t able to do.

“When I came in for pre-season, they were very conscious of not breaking me down because that would set me back further. It’s been different, hopefully now with 90 minutes in the tank, I can look forward.”

The Hatters step up their pre-season preparation with fixtures at Wolves and VfL Bochum this week, Lockyer stressed he is not getting too ahead of himself before our Premier League opener at Brighton.

“You don’t really want to look too far ahead, I know you can get carried away with the season we’ve got coming up. We have to focus on getting our principles right on the pitch, do everything that we can do in training, so we are well drilled for that first game.

“You want to win these pre-season friendlies but there’s deeper meanings for us at the minute. Our shape, how we want to play, how we want to move the ball, getting to know the new lads that have come in.”