TORONTO -- Toronto FC’s players trained on the new grass pitch at BMO Field for the first time on Tuesday morning as Preki continues to prepare his side for the home opener against Philadelphia Union on Thursday night (kick off 7:00 p.m. live in HD on GOLTV Canada).

“It is nice to be on the grass,” said Preki following this morning’s training session. “Obviously we haven’t been on grass for a while and I think it is going to help the players, especially their bodies. Sometimes I felt because we have been working very hard on turf throughout the week, their bodies get sore and tired, but we don’t want to use that as an excuse. It is a beautiful day and we had a good training session, so I think we are ready.”

“The game is supposed to be played on grass so it is great to have it here. It is going to help cut down on injures and we are looking forward to moving to grass for the whole week for training and that is also something we are working on.”

Toronto’s two new signings Adrian Cann and Maxim Usanov trained with the team on Tuesday and Preki admits he may make changes to the line-up for the clash with the expansion team. “There might be some changes. We are looking at a few things but we are not going to make changes just because we lost. I thought there were a lot of positives in the first half in New England. It was 15 minutes of disaster in the second half that cost us the game. There are a lot of good things to build on and hopefully we can put a good 90 minutes together.”