Town's squad travelled up to Wrexham's Colliers Park training centre yesterday for their first competitive action of the pre-season.

The two sides played out a practice game of three 30-minutes sessions to give the lads a change of scenery and a good test against a strong Wrexham side.

Town manager Paul Simpson was pleased with yesterday's workout and the way his side reacted to the challenge: "It was a good run out for us and a nice change of scenery down at Wrexham's training ground.

"We had a real good game and played three 30-minutes periods but it was all done properly with a good tempo to the game.

"The players have worked extremely hard in the first part of the training program but when you get out on a pitch it's a different level of fitness and some of them were breathing out of their backsides even though they only played 45-minutes.

"It is a good indication of where we are now but also where we need to get to in terms of fitness."

All of the Town squad were involved yesterday, bar Marc Tierney who had a slight groin problem, and the majority of the lads got 45-minutes under their belts. In the end Town won 1-0 thanks to a tap in from Kelvin Langmead but the result wasn't important to the Town manager: "We won the game 1-0 but the scoreline wasn't that important it was more a case of getting people used to movements that go into a football game and levels and tempos that they have to play at.

"The only player who wasn't available was Marc Tierney who had a little bit of soreness on the bone around the groin area so we didn't take any chances with him.

"We thought Grant Holt wasn't going to be available as he had a little bit of tightness round the groin but he turned up and said he was ok and wanted to be involved. That threw my plans because the idea was to that they were all going to play 45-minutes, so in the end everybody played 45-minutes expect Richard Walker, Guy Madjo and Grant Holt who had 30-minutes each.

"The lads all played in their own positions to give them a chance to get back into the swing of things, when we go out to Spain we will look at different ways that we are going to play.

"I purposely mixed the teams up yesterday because as soon as you pick that first team then everybody will think that is my first choice. That is not the case, we are still at the stage where I am getting everybody together and try to get a squad mentality together."

The lads will fly out on Sunday to Almeria in Spain for their pre-season training camp. It's four days away in the gorgeous Spanish weather but if any of the fans think it will be a picnic for the lads they are very wrong. Three sessions a day, some in the 35 degree heat, starting at 7am will really put the lads through their paces: "When we are in Spain we are expecting it to be really hot, it's about 35 to 36 degrees at the moment, but that is another test for the lad's fitness levels and a test for their breathing systems.

"We will be training at 7am when it's not ridiculously hot, then we will have a break before starting again at 10.30am, in the afternoon there will be a rest and recovery period where they do no work before we start again at 6 in the evening for the third session.

"It will be quite intense training time but the 10.30am session will be more of a technical one about making sure their touch is right and allow us to work on things like the basic set-up for set-pieces, throw ins and all the little things people don't realise you have to work on.

"If we can be 1% better from defending throw-ins, 1% better from defending free-kicks, 1% better from defending corners then when you add them together it should make us a better team.

"I want to make sure that we cover everything over pre-season and there is nothing that can be thrown at us that we haven't worked on."