Walsall 0 Wolves 1 - The Swain Game

But if this game told us anything, it is that their supporters are.

Nearly 4,000 of them poured into The Banks's Stadium for the Premier League newcomers' first friendly on English soil and you could almost touch the sense of anticipation growing among the gold and black clans.

So awful was the congestion on the car park they call the M6, more than half must have missed not only the game's only goal – a 16th minute strike from Andrew Surman – but their team's brightest period of the game in the opening half-hour.

But then pre-season friendlies are invariably nothing more than fitness exercises and, after the celebrations of May's title triumph, this was probably much the same experience for supporters – getting themselves into shape for the great Premier League test – now just 25 days away.

It's impossible to tell how Wolves are progressing at this stage with manager Mick McCarthy splitting his now substantial first team squad into halves, the second of which will be employed at Port Vale tonight.

This was little more than an exercise in players seeking out timing and touch and getting their 'match legs' pumping again.

With Walsall providing a game opposition on the home venue's tight surrounds, it was competitive enough for Wolves to place as high a value on the exercise as Saddlers gaffer Jeff Bonser did on all those £12 entrance fees coming through the turnstiles.

Perhaps for Bobo Balde the fixture carried a little more significance. McCarthy talked up the contribution from his on-trial defender after the victory but, in truth, it was a mixed performance from the former Celtic man searching for a career swansong at Molineux.

There were plenty of demonstrations of the defender's raw power but also moments of concentration lapses, most obviously when he allowed Sam Parkin to slip around his blind side early in the second-half, when Wolves allowed a Rhys Weston free-kick to arrive unopposed in their area.

Parkin's effort struck the outside of the woodwork, the closest the Saddlers would come to a goal.

But McCarthy's assessment of Balde is complicated by the knowledge that he has barely played any football in the last couple of years. Having been promised an answer by next week, Saturday's friendly at Bristol City looms large for the French-born Guinean.

Elsewhere, the most memorable phase of the game for Wolves came early on when they took the wraps off a clever free-kick featuring two more new boys, Greg Halford and Surman, which played in Andy Keogh for a shot he drilled wide.

Put that one away in the locker for the Premier League – it might just be worth a goal.

Then Sylvan Ebanks-Blake muscled his way onto a header which struck the post, after Keogh and George Friend had got behind Walsall's right flank.

Keogh and Ebanks-Blake then led the counter-attack which would lead to Surman's goal as the Saddlers half-cleared the top scorer's cross and their old former loan midfielder drilled a 20-yard left footer into the bottom corner.

Wolves withstood Walsall pressure at the start and end of the second period, with keeper Wayne Hennessey impressive in the closing stages, especially in keeping out Troy Deeney's flying header.

But in between came the hard yards amid some inevitably stodgy and scruffy phases of play, as Wolves continued their efforts to get up to speed with only a minor ankle knock for Surman disturbing them before the occasion closed on a potentially significant note.

With three minutes remaining, we had the public first team unveiling of Zeli Ismail, a young man who already has some daunting advance publicity to live up to.

He didn't get a kick but the fans will hope for special things from him in the future.

Which pretty much sums up their prayers for McCarthy's team over the coming months.