It's Chesterfield at home on the opening day of the new season on Saturday, August 9.

 

Perhaps not the most glamorous of fixtures for the kick-off for Barnet's hundreds of new season ticket holders, but a good test for Paul Fairclough and his players against a side who were involved in the race for the play-offs for much of last season.

 

The Bees won at Saltergate 1-0, with Jason Norville scoring the winner, but succumbed 2-0 at Underhill over the Christmas-New Year period.

 

Jack Lester, the Chesterfield striker who scored 25 League goals last season, was cited by Fairclough as the type of 20-goals-a-season marksman he was seeking for the Bees in the January transfer window.

 

The Football League have responded to the pleas to help the Bees' supporters avoid aborted trips to Spotland in wintry conditions as last season by scheduling Rochdale as the first away fixture of the new campaign - on August 16.

 

But supporters looking for sunny seaside trips to newcomers Bournemouth and Exeter will be disappointed. Bournemouth away is on Sunday, December 28, and Exeter - with Torquay in mind - is in late January.

 

The Boxing Day game at Underhill enables the Bees to lock horns again with old Conference rivals Aldershot Town, maybe featuring Anthony Charles and Louis Soares. A trip to Darlington on the Saturday before Christmas is not as exciting a prospect unless it is to avoid the shopping.

 

Gillingham, possibly including Simon King, are due at Underhill on December 13 ... League 2 newcomers Port Vale provide the opposition on the final day of the season on May 2, 2009.

I make it only 54 days to go before the Big Kick Off ... but check my maths.

 

Dennis Signy.