AUSTRIA, Italy, the United States (twice) and Singapore – Burnley have come a long way from their once annual summer trip to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Football Festival.

It has served the club well to broaden their horizons and clock up the Airmiles in recent years.

It has helped to forge links overseas and to introduce themselves to new fans and admirers.

But I’m happy to report that only non-UK resident supporters will be the ones who need their passports to catch the pre-season friendly action this year.

Eddie Howe has shunned the opportunity to venture from these shores.

Instead he is preferring to do all of their groundwork for the 2011-12 campaign from their Turf Moor base, travelling no further than the south west of England to boost their match fitness.

It was not a question of the board keeping the cost down.

It was purely a managerial call.

At 33, the Burnley boss is as in touch with the players as anyone and knows there isn’t much to be gained by tearing them away from their homes and families, with whom they have become reacquainted between early May and late June.

More importantly, from a footballing point of view, there is little benefit to dragging them halfway around the world to play a couple of friendlies against unknown teams whose standard is difficult to gauge.

Time in the air, going through customs, waiting for baggage, could be better spent on the the training ground and, ahead of his first full season at Turf Moor, that’s exactly what Howe intends to do.

I expect few among his ranks will have any complaints about the way pre-season is panning out.

Hollywood it is not, and those who were on that summer trip in 2009 may long for a repeat.

Preparations for life in the Premier League began as Owen Coyle’s crew rubbed shoulders with Barry Manilow and Scarlett Johansson. Well, perhaps not, there were bouncers who prevented such close contact, but that US trip included a cocktail party at the Beverley Hills Hotel.

They were signalling their top flight arrival in style, but in between fixtures against VC Fusion and Cary Clarets (whatever happened to them?!) where was the substance?

I’m told a number of players spent most of that afternoon huddled around a table playing cards, just as they would on the bus to Barnsley, or in the hotel the night before a game in the capital.

They could have been anywhere in the world.

When the Clarets journeyed to the Far East last summer, backed by new director John Banaszkiewicz, it took them 30 hours to get there.

It was hot and humid and an ever-lean Graham Alexander lost almost half a stone in body fluid in just one training session.

It was where Chris McCann had almost a full season written off by another knee injury too.

Of course, that could have happened anywhere, but he was a long way from home and from many of the medics who knew his case.

But pre-season isn’t just about the players, it’s about the fans who want to satisfy their hunger for football after a long summer and catch the first glimpse of any new signings.

This year’s programme will be far more simple and straight-forward for everyone concerned.

As for the players, what it lacks in glamour it seems set to make up for in good, old-fashioned graft...and there’s no substitute for hard work.