The OIdham Athletic team behind new signings teasers

And even though there is currently a lull with the media commitments surrounding a match day, such as programme producing, social media content creating and pre and post-match interview recording for first team fixtures, this is when the creative juices can really go into overdrive among the media team.

Teasers for new signings are up there with the most anticipated, most viewed and most appreciated of a club journalist's work.

That comes with a degree of pressure, but it is pressure that head of media Alan Jones embraces.

"It's one of the most stressful but the most rewarding times," he said.

"Normally it's probably the most intense couple of hours that you get.

"Different clubs have various ways of announcing signings. Some just put the announcement out like we used to do, but I suppose last summer to tie in with the general sense of excitement that was around the Rothwell family's first summer transfer window, we wanted to try to introduce a couple more ideas in terms of the announcements, which went down well and we were pleased with how we did them."

Explaining the process, Jones said: "The more notice we get with a signing the better but working in football that's not always possible. Sometimes it's really last minute. Sometimes you don't know until the player is going to arrive at the ground whether they're signing.

"Basically on the day of the signing everything else goes out of the window. You can try to forward plan in other aspects of the job but if you've got a signing coming in it takes over the whole day.

"It's when all eyes are on you and you do feel the pressure. We enjoy trying to do things creatively but at the same time you know you're never going to please everyone. What one person thinks is great another person might think is cheesy and over the top."

Either way, they are a talking point.

"I think the first one we did last summer was the announcement for Josh Lundstram, which Frank Rothwell did," Jones continued.

"We knew that Josh was on the radar but we didn't get told when it was going to be. It was quite a way into the summer so I'd had the idea in my head for a while, and it was just coincidence that Frank was here on the day so we were able to get that and put it together, and Frank jumped at the opportunity to play a starring role. So that was good and that probably gained the most traction out of all the ones we did last year.

"Then there was the one in January with Andrew Dallas.

"You know you have to do something along the theme of Dallas and adapt it, and that went down really well.

"It took a bit of work to do to get the footage of Oldham, which was a mix of our own footage and some from the internet.

"We weren't given a great deal of notice of it officially happening but we'd heard things and had done a bit of work in the background.

"We try to spend as much time on what we put out as we can and I like to think in terms of the standards we try to keep in our work we like to commit as much time as we can to it.

"The real challenge is that you're against the clock, and we're only a small team."

Dallas was an obvious theme to home in on, but that is not always the case with new signings.

"The Dan Ward one was quite difficult and we had two signings on the same day with Shaun Hobson as well," said Jones.

"The idea for Dan Ward was something that came to us while we were discussing options. That was the Ant and Dec one with the periscope, which was a clip from about 10 years ago from I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

"You're looking at different strands and themes you can pick so with Dan being a Geordie that's how we came up with that idea. Sometimes it's a player's name - you want to try to tease the name ideally - but sometimes it's their background or their position, the club's they've played for previously.

"Sometimes it's down to the players co-operating whether ideas come off or not. We were really lucky with Ethan Walker because he was up for doing stuff with Walkers crisps, but sometimes you suggest things to a player and they say 'No, I don't want to do that', which is quite common.

"In the case of James Norwood, we felt the pressure with that because it's a huge name and it was right at the end of the summer so we'd already done a few of these. "It was actually a lad who was on work experience at the time with the kitman who gave us the idea for this teaser. He was asking me what we had planned and mentioned there had been a lot of comments on Twitter (now X) from Tranmere fans and Barnsley fans saying 'there's no way we're going to sign Norwood', and could we put all those comments together.

"So that's where the idea for that came from, and that was one of the most popular ones.

"With the Joe Garner one in January, you're never going to get another opportunity to make an announcement from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean so we were able to get Frank on board with that one during his world record breaking fundraiser.

"We would have loved to have got a video message but there were technology issues, so we settled for a phone call."

He added: "It's a really rewarding part of the job but it's a challenge trying to think of new things.

"But it's a team effort, and not just among the media staff. One of the ideas last year came from Junior the groundsman.

"At a small club like this everyone chips in."