Brown admits playing catch-up in battle for fitness

Darlington'S Aaron Brown admits he is playing catch-up in his fitness battle as he bids to be ready for the first game of the season. Quakers start the new campaign at home to Braintree Town on Saturday, but Brown may not be considered ready for 90 minutes having only just recovered from a thigh injury sustained a month ago. Over the past week the leftback has made two appearances as a substitute, against Sunderland and Harrogate. Those matches took the number of minutes he has been on the field in pre-season to just over an hour, leaving his place in the season's first starting line-up less than assured. He said: You get your main fitness from pre-season and that carries you through the whole season. I've missed out on a lot of work so I'm going to have to do a little bit extra now that I'm back. I pulled my thigh in the first week of pre-season training which wasn't ideal, but I've recovered now so it was nice to get some minutes against Sunderland last week and at Harrogate on Saturday. Hopefully I can kick on from here. There's a difference between keeping and being match fit. Match fitness is what you need to play games, but you really need that base fitness to get you started. Despite an injury-interrupted pre-season, Brown is looking forward to getting the campaign under way, with the initial aim being to better last year's mediocre start. Darlington won only two of their first ten matches, before a much-improved second half to 2010-11 saw them finish just outside the play-offs. Brown said: I thought we were brilliant towards the end of last season. We got a lot of points and obviously the Wembley win was magnificent so we're hoping to carry on that form at the start of this season because we didn't start last season very well. We didn't pick up many points as there were too many draws a few clean sheets but not enough goals. Hopefully we can improve on that this season. We've got James Walshaw now and he seems to know where the net is. When you meet people on the street you get that feeling that there is a bit of a buzz around Darlington. Hopefully we can use that feel-good factor to kick-start the season. We have a difficult game on Saturday against Braintree. It won't be easy because they were promoted last season so they'll be on a high and we'll need to be at our best to get a win. The Darlington supporters trust are inviting participants to their prediction league competition, with all profits going to Quakers' youth development programme. For details, go to www.darlotrust.co.uk

Source: Northern_Echo