Micky Mellon said the game with Warrington Rylands was purely a fitness exercise as his players build up to the new 2024/25 campaign.

Latics let a 1-0 lead slip to lose 2-1 against their Northern Premier League opponents at The Hive Stadium last night (Tuesday).

But manager Mellon insists the result in this and future midweek friendlies, in particular, are irrelevant.

"I'm going to use the midweek ones as minutes," he said.

"I knew what (minutes) everyone was going to play regardless of how the game went. People were going to play that amount of time, unless they got an injury.

"Only Oli Hammond got an injury so he had to come off.

"But we wanted to give people a run around and build on those fitness levels.

"It's important that we get match time so the young boys and a few trialists we've got did that, so that was a positive.

"I wanted to give the trialists and Mo (Doro) and Kofi (Moore) a little go (in the line-up). It's important that you involve them in pre-season as well. They all got time."

In a much-changed line-up from Saturday's home win over Stockport County, including a trialist goalkeeper and Alex Reid in the XI, Dan Gardner put Latics in front.

Reid was fouled as he tried to burst through on goal, Gardner's 25-yard free kick bounced off the wall and he fired the rebound first-time into the bottom left corner to give the National League side a 14th minute lead.

Former Burnley striker Ntumba Massanka equalised for Rylands 10 minutes later.

Within a minute of Doro missing a chance to make it 2-0 to the visitors, Massanka levelled with a clever chip over the keeper.

There were chances at both ends for the remainder of the half, and that pattern carried on in the second. But Rylands were assisted by a defensive mix-up, which led to goalkeeper Magnus Norman giving the ball away to Massanka, who squared for a trialist to side-foot into an empty net.