Phil Brown believes his players will benefit immensely from their participation in the Barclays Asia Trophy in Beijing next month.

It was confirmed on Wednesday morning that the Tigers would be participating in the pre-season tournament where they will take on local side Beijing Goan in their opening game on Wednesday 29th July.

With Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United also taking part, Brown is very much looking forward to the four-team competition and says it is vital City embrace this opportunity for the future of the Club.

"We need to embrace things like this for the future of Hull City," Brown told www.hullcityafc.net

"The players will gain great levels of fitness, especially having come back from Bormio and the altitude training we will be doing there.

"What they will get from the Barclays Asia Trophy is a real test both physically and mentally. The players are being thrown into the unknown and that rings true with the Barclays Premier League last year because it was exactly the same for us.

"But this will be a different test. It will be a case of jumping on a flight for 11 or 12 hours, getting off and getting into the swing of things in terms of the cultural differences, the training methods because we will be training at different times of day and then playing games in the humidity that we will be playing in.

"We'll certainly be putting our bodies and minds to the test before we kick-off the new season."

Having recently returned from a trip to Singapore, Brown experienced just how big a draw English football is in the Far East and he is keen for his players to impress as the Tigers mark another milestone in their history.

"A lot of people in Europe don't realise how big football is out there. I was doing the FA Cup coverage for ESPN and it was attracting an audience of between 600 and 650 million people. That shows how big Barclays Premier League football is over there.

"For us to be a part of that because of the success we had last year, I'm just desperate for the players to expose themselves to what football in the Far East can offer.

"Okay, you can call the games pre-season friendlies, but we're challenging for a trophy abroad and that is a testament to how far we have come and how diverse the last two or three years have been at Hull City.

"To go from scrapping down at the bottom of the Championship to playing in the Barclays Asia Trophy in the space of two years is fantastic and I'm enjoying the journey, as are the players."