Wrexham travelled to Darlington on the first day of the 2007-08 ‘League 2’
campaign as optimistic as any team at the beginning of a new football season, despite the horrors of last term. Darlington are expected to be up there or thereabouts come the end of the season so there is no shame in this defeat. However, given that Wrexham matched ‘Darlo’ for much of the game it’s disappointing that we did not pick up at least a point.

The first half was lacklustre with few chances created by either side.
However shortly before half-time, a defensive lapse from Wrexham let Kevin McBride head Darlington into a 1-0 lead. In the second-half Wrexham put more pressure on Darlington. The Quakers ‘keeper Andy Oakes was red-carded for bringing Michael Proctor down outside the area. Playing against 10 men it was hoped that Wrexham would be able to take advantage but soon after a brilliant strike from that wily old campaigner Julian Joachim made it 2-0.
Game over.

A more sobering start to the season than we’d hoped for. However with no great expectations other than to avoid being dragged into another relegation battle, we shouldn’t get too depressed. Besides, we’ve got a nice early distraction coming up on Tuesday. An away trip to Port Vale for the Carling Cup 1st Round…

Lots of goals, but not as many positives to be drawn from this game as from the friendlies against Liverpool and Blackburn. Championship side Burnley did have a strong side out (Kyle Lafferty, Ade Akinbiyi, Robbie Blake, Jon Harley, Joey Gudjonnson, Alan Mahon and Gabor Kiraly all got a game for them), but Wrexham were generally poor.

A lacklustre first-half saw Andy Gray get 2 poacher's goals for the Clarets.

In the second-half Wrexham got back into it, a bit of hard-work and perseverance from Mike Carvill giving Mike Proctor the chance to score.
Proctor scored again shortly after from the penalty spot, but almost immediately a long-range strike from Gudjonnson gave Burnley the lead again.
This was increased when Akinbiyi scored a penalty. Burnely wrapped the game up 5-2 when Jay Rodriguez scored the third penalty of the night.

The Wrexham line-up was far from Brian Carey's first choice, with a friendly at Newtown the night after he was obviously resting players for that game.
There were a few decent individual performances from the likes of Proctor
and the hard-working Carvill, but this was a disappointing game overall.

Attendance 1,457