Leyton Orient’s Sean Clohessy admitted the atmosphere amongst the team is more competitive than this time last season.

The defender played a big role in the O’s 0-0 draw against League One Charlton on Saturday, July 23 as Orient showed good promise in the pre-season friendly.

The 29-year-old said as the competition for places is fierce, with two senior players to every position on the pitch, the club can turn this into a positive.

He said: “I think this year everybody is eager for a position, everybody knows they want that shirt come August 6 against Cheltenham.

“But then on the other hand people know it is a long season, obviously boys are going to be disappointed no matter who it is.

“Everyone feels they should be playing and come Cheltenham if they are not in the squad they are going to have to wait their turn and push for that position.

“But yes the only thing I can really say it is really competitive.”

Clohessy has featured in all of O’s boss Andy Hessenthaler’s pre-season friendlies at right-back and has demonstrated his flare on many occasions.

The former Colchester United player said he feels the team and himself have hit a good level of fitness.

“I can honestly say it is one of the hardest pre-seasons I have had in terms of running,” he said.

“We have eased off on the running side a little bit now as we done so much running in the first two weeks.

“And now we are starting to use it in the matches and you can see the boys looked fit and we are able to get round the pitch.

“I think we showed against Charlton we are up there or even fitter than them.

“And that is a League One team who is meant to be challenging for things and we have done well against them.”

Orient have managed to keep two back-to-back clean sheets as they beat Woking 2-0 with goals from Dean Cox and Paul McCallum and shut out the Addicks.

But Clohessy said they can take confidence from these clean sheets but performance is hard to judge based on pre-season matches.

He added: “It is hard to judge as pre-season is pre-season it is very hard to judge performances to see where you are at.

“But I think a lot of teams are going to be very direct but we have good centre halves who can head a ball and as long as we are strong defensively we can win games.

“We have guys up front who can score from anything and make sure we are solid all over the pitch.”

Orient travel to Dagenham & Redbridge tomorrow night with kick off at 7:45pm at Victoria Road.