THE rehearsals are over and the real business starts for Warrington Town soccer team this weekend.

The Cantilever Park side, managed by Glenn Walker and Derek Brownbill, will start the North West Counties League Division One season with two tough tests following a number of friendly games.

Town, with eight new players on board, will open the season with clashes against two of last season's top five sides, third-placed Mossley and fifth-placed Skelmersdale United. Warrington finished 16th last term.

Manchester side Mossley are 7-2 favourites to win the title but it will be interesting to see how the team copes without Ally Pickering, as the club and manager parted company on Sunday. Assistant manager Jason Beckford will be the caretaker man in charge for the start of the campaign.

Town will not have much time to recover from that challenge before travelling to joint second favourites for the title Skelmersdale on Tuesday.

Certainly Town's new-look squad has impressed the management team with its pre-season work but the truth of Town's capabilities this term will only become clear as the league season unfolds.

Brownbill said: "We've been pleased with everything about the pre-season, from the attitude of the players who have stayed on to fight for their places to the youngsters who we are looking to develop. It was all young lads on the field for the second half of last week's friendly with Crosfields. It was 3-1 at half-time and 8-1 at full time."

Four of those goals were scored by Graham Mitchell, who has been brought to the club from St. Helens and had been a regular scorer for Sidac in the Warrington Soccer League over the past few years.

He carried that form into Thursday's 1-1 draw with Rossendale United, who are a higher league Unibond side that only equalised in the fifth minute of injury time at Cantilever Park.

On Saturday Town's skipper and central defender Lee Webster got married and so he and a number of squad men were missing for the last warm-up clash with Durham City, who have spent a huge chunk of money on recruitment this summer.

Town won 3-1 and Mitchell scored the opening goal.