Kids' stuff

The final game of a long, horrible season sees Darlington visit the Kassam Stadium in a fixture ultimately meaningless, but which is important to give the supporters a modicum of hope to keep them going over the summer. Ian Atkins will be giving an opportunity to many of the youngsters in the squad, and has expressly stated that none of the released players will feature, so that means we've already seen the last of ROS Rob Folland (and we never even got a chance to say goodbye). Simon King will almost certainly feature, alongside Dean Whitehead, Sam Ricketts, Chris Hackett and Jamie Brooks.

The Supporters Player of the Season trophy will be presented before the game and Brooks is almost certainly going to be the recipient, to add to all the other awards he has already received this season. The players will also be kicking autographed footballs into the crowd before the game, and Firoz Kassam will address the crowd then too. In addition there's a new Rage On for sale, so it doesn't come better than that.

Darlington have also had a disappointing season, although entertaining for the antics of the chairman's wife. Next season they should have a brand new stadium of their very own, so will be using their visit to Minchery Farm to suss out what it's like to have no atmosphere. They have no former United players in their squad, although left back Simon Betts had a couple of games on trial for United prior to the start of the season, so he's probably going to be the match winner.

In keeping with the spirit of the occasion Rage Online is going to let close-season optimism start early and we predict a 1-1 draw. As usual we fully expect to be proven wrong.

One thing that we can look forward to over the summer (apart from the World Cup, whatever relevance that has) is the usual rumour-mongering and transfer speculation. Firoz Kassam has apparently told Ian Atkins that he is allowed to bring in five new players so that is effectively a whole team's worth of squad members that Atkins can call his own. Kassam has also said that he is giving himself 18 months to turn things around. What he didn't state is what would happen at the end of this period, or even how a turn-around is defined.