Ahead of our first home fixture of the season against Boreham Wood, we spoke to Mark Hughes.
Speaking to CUTV, he said: "I think I said before the game leading into it that we'd had enough pre-season friendlies, we needed to get into the thrust of the new season.
"We're off and running now. I think everybody's pleased about that.
"I think it's the first time for a long, long time that we've won the opening away game. It's a good start, perfect start really in terms of what we wanted before the game. As you can imagine, the atmosphere in the dressing room afterwards was really strong, really good.
"Everybody is really positive about what we're trying to do this year."
Speaking on training this week, he said: "The levels have been really good. It's important that you see that attitude to work and application and endurance and all those things. Yeah, they're in good evidence at the moment. We're really pleased with really the approach that the groups take into training and the amount of effort they put into the work that we set them.That's going to obviously stand us in good stead as the season progresses because we need to level that.
"It enables us to take good performances time and time again, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday and if you train correctly then you're able to produce when it matters. So the quality of the training is really good at the moment.
"I'm always talking about we need to take from and what we do in training and see evidence of that in the game when it matters.
"I'm really pleased we're starting to see a lot of the work that we do in training coming to the fore and the more things we do automatically the better team we will be.
"I think it helps that we've got a few of the guys that obviously were with me last year and that's enabled everybody to get up to speed really quickly because obviously they know what we're looking for and the new lads tap into that and yeah, the level of work is good at the moment."
Looking ahead to this weekend's test, he said: "They're a good side, they can mix it up. They've got threats at the top end of the pitch, they're nice and solid at the back so a similar test for us in terms of what we need to do but yeah, we'll have healthy respect for them.
"They've got to build momentum obviously from coming up last year so we have to be mindful of that but I'm more interested in how we perform on the back of a good performance last week."
On the return to Brunton Park, Mark stated: "Obviously a number of the lads haven't played clearly on the pitch.Some maybe have been in opposition shirts but it'll be the first time some of them play in a Carlisle shirt and we had a little bit of a taste of it on Tuesday, just went out there and I think it's important that players can get their bearings on the pitch in terms of where they predominantly are going to play and what areas of the field they need to be in and get reference points from how the stand looks or where the corner flags are.
"It's all about reference points and it helps if you can get on the pitch and get those done before you face it for the first time."
Finally, on the supporters, he said: "Thankfully we give them what they wanted and it was a long trek for everybody but to come away with a really positive performance and clearly the result that everybody wanted was key for us and I think everybody enjoyed Saturday night."
