Oxford United’s players are getting back to normality after the chaos caused by the recent snow.

Manager Chris Wilder admitted last week was “chaotic” with several first-team members simply unable to get to training, difficulties in finding any suitable training pitches and the uncertainty over when the next match would be, with the away league game at Kettering twice postponed.

But he says the break, after such an intense programme of matches, may not be such a bad thing for them.

“Last week was chaotic,” he said.

“We’ve been physically not able to get players in, players like Beano (James Constable) and Lewis (Haldane), which has made it hard to work on things.

“So I’ve had to ask players to work on their own. And I trust my players to do something. They should do, at this stage of the season, after how well things have been going.

“We planned to have the players inside last Thursday, but that became impossible to get everyone together.

“At this stage of the season maybe it’s not been so bad that they’ve had a break, but I thought psychologically and mentally it was very important to get them in again soon, so we could all work together.

“We’ve been in Sunday and Monday and were planning on a double session on Tuesday with maybe some gym and pool work.”

For U’s skipper Adam Murray, who travels down from the Midlands each day, the bad weather was a nightmare.

“It was very difficult and I was off the whole week,” he said.

“I didn’t train, but went to our local gym to keep fit. It’s not the same as training with the lads though, and all the banter.

“But on Sunday we got in and managed to train on a small section of the Kassam Stadium pitch and it was good to get back to proper training again the last couple of days.

“With the kind of run we were on, we didn’t really want any disruptions or to miss games to lose any momentum. We would have played every day!

“But there’s nothing you can do about it, you just have to get on with it, and we can’t wait now to hopefully get the game on against Barrow.”

One United player who is set to link up again with his teammates soon is defender Shane Killock, who is recovering from the hamstring injury he sustained in the 1-0 win at Crawley on January 24.

“He’s up at Huddersfield having treatment, the diagnosis was 4-6 weeks and when he gets close, maybe after 2-3 weeks, he’ll come back down to join up with us again,” Wilder reported.

Meanwhile, Adam Chapman's hopes of playing for Northern Ireland Under 21s this week were dashed when their game against Wales Under 21s in Ballymena was called off.