City have pulled the plug on next Tuesday's friendly with Middlesbrough.

The club reluctantly decided to call it off because they feared that Boro would not send any big names to Valley Parade.

The Premiership side have a first-team game scheduled for Nottingham Forest at the same time as City were due to face a Middlesbrough XI.

Boro played two matches last night with the senior side playing Rotherham while another team, mainly made up of reserves and juniors, were at York. Massimo Maccarone and Juninho were the only well-known faces due to feature at Bootham Crescent.

City are wary of more adverse publicity if they pressed ahead with a game billed against Premiership opponents and instead faced a team of youngsters.

Steering committee frontman Jim Brown said: "We're extremely disappointed to have to make this decision. But this is not down as a first-team fixture for Middlesbrough and we don't feel it would be fair to our fans.

"It is a big blow because against a strong Middlesbrough team we would have been looking at a crowd of between 4,000 and 5,000."

With the July cashflow very tight, a decent crowd would have brought in up to £20,000 in much-needed revenue for City after Boro had agreed to waive their 50 per cent share.

Wayne Jacobs' testimonial against Bolton on Saturday is now the only pre-season friendly at home. Colin Todd's side have just one more warm-up match after that against Shrewsbury and may try to fit in a behind-closed-doors game in the spare week.

The Bantams last night suffered their first defeat of pre-season with a 1-0 loss at Darlington.

Todd was fairly happy with the performance but felt his side should have been more ruthless in front of goal.

He said: "We had good opportunities in the second half and if you're not going to pull the trigger, then you've got to make sure that pass across the goal gives somebody a tap-in.

"I've got no complaints if the lads have a shot and miss the target because at least they're making a positive decision.

"But I was pleased with the tempo in the second half when we stepped it up without really getting the rewards we deserved."