NATIONAL LEAGUE NORTH

TERRY Mitchell has already turned his focus towards next season after Blyth Spartans ended their current campaign with a 2-2 draw at Gloucester City.

Spartans made a lively start to the contest and took a deserved lead when Connor Thomson put them in front with 12 minutes gone.

Their advantage remained in place for more than an hour – but was quickly wiped out by two goals in a minute from Fabien Robert and Lucas Tomlinson.

Spartans would not be denied, though, and they roared back to claim a point as club legend Robbie Dale came off the bench to make his 721st and final appearance for Spartans by playing a part in their equaliser.

In the third minute of added-on time, the long-serving winger saw his deflected shot find its way to top goalscorer JJ O’Donnell and he made no mistake with a cool finish.

After the game, Mitchell said: “It will be busy for the next seven, eight, nine, ten, 14 days.

“It’s a big week, we have to sort out the retained and released players.

“It can be a good job and a bad job because you have lads who will not be with us next season and there’s a lot of reflection to do.

“We’ve had meetings, a lot of it has been thought about, but there’s still a lot of planning to be going in now over the next two to three weeks.

“Planning pre-season, planning friendlies, planning new players coming in, so there’s loads to be done.

“We have some targets who are at clubs, we will see what happens with that.

“We will go as early as we can but we will only go if they are to improve the group.”

Spennymoor Town narrowly missed out on the National League North play-offs despite ending their season with a home victory against Chorley.

Goals from Mark Anderson and Glen Taylor gave the Moors a 2-0 win against the Magpies – but it was still not enough to secure a top-seven place as Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley’s men ended the campaign three points shy of a play-off spot.

Darlington’s season came to a losing end as they fell to a low-key 1-0 defeat at Kidderminster Harriers thanks to a Keziah Martin strike.

The result means the Quakers ended the season in 13th place in the National League North table.