AFTER bringing to an end his three-year stay with Darlington, Phil Turnbull has talked of his pride at playing for the club and believes his time with Quakers could not been much better.

He has joined South Shields, his hometown club, which means dropping into the Northern Premier League, the division he won with Darlington in 2015-16 in his first season after joining from Gateshead.

Hopes will be high at South Shields that they can make it four promotions in a row, though they would do well to match the 104 points Quakers racked up when they pipped Blyth Spartans to top spot during a campaign that saw Turnbull win two of the club’s player of the year awards.

“When you sign for a club you have hopes about how it works out, and it couldn’t have gone much better,” said the 31-year-old.

“This season wasn’t great but it’s been a bit of a turnaround season with a new manager, but in my first year the intention as to get promotion and we did it – it was probably the best season of my career.

“I won player of the season and the players’ player of the year award as well, which I’d never done elsewhere, so that was a special thing for me, it’s a big achievement to do it at a club like Darlington.

“I had the shield for a year and there were some big players on there, people like Marco Gabbiadini and Mark Prudhoe.

“In the future people will see that, my kids might see it, with my name on and it’s something to be proud of.

“It’s been an unbelievable journey and something that I’m proud of.”

Brought to the club by Martin Gray, Turnbull joined Darlington when he stepped down from being a full-time professional and went on to make 126 appearances.

“I like to think I’ve had a decent impact,” he added. “When I’ve left clubs and look back on what we’ve done to see if we’re in a better position than we were when I signed and we are.

“I must’ve racked up over 120 appearances as I did 40 games a season for three seasons – I could probably count on one hand how many games I missed.”

He could count on one finger how many goals he scored – a spectacular volley in a 2-0 win at home to Gloucester in January 2017.

But it was never goalscoring that Turnbull was in the team for, his cool head, ability to keep possession and being able to pick a pass were his key attributes.

The highlight for most players that were with Darlington during the ’15-16 campaign is Whitby away, when the NPL title was won with a 7-1 victory when Quakers were 5-0 after 20 minutes.

But Turnbull did not play due to injury, so chooses a different occasion for his most memorable match.

He said: “Whitby was unbelievable for the way we went about winning, being with the fans on the pitch afterwards and they have that stand there that meant we could lift the trophy in front of the fans. It was a special night and it’s in my top five in football.

“But the best moment in my whole career was the 4-3 at Salford City. Prior to signing for Darlington I knew they had a knack for late comebacks in games, and I knew they had a bit of history with Salford – we went in at half-time 2-0 down and Martin went to town on us. He’s saying ‘You’ve bottled it, I want to see a reaction’.

“We went out for the second half and scored straight away, game on. But then we went 3-1 down, and any other club I’ve been at that would have been it, dead and buried.

“But then we scored, then scored again for 3-3, and then Nathan Cartman scored the winner in the last minute and it was absolutely unbelievable. Carts ran to the corner with Tim Hickman, a Darlo fan, and it was one of them games that you will never ever forget.”

At South Shields Turnbull will team up again with Gary Brown and Chris Hunter, two ex-Darlington defender who two weeks ago moved to Mariners Park, and will again be playing in front of large attendances.

He added: “Everyone in the North-East knows the size of the club that Darlington is, but people probably don’t appreciate it until you go to an away game and there’s 500 Darlo fans there.

“It’s been an absolute pleasure and something I will look back on fondly.

“I would not have left Darlington for any club other than South Shields. They’re a club on the up and everybody, if they’re brutally honest, would like to play for their hometown club one day, I think Darlington fans would probably say the same.

“There’s massive ambition, they want to get out of the division they are in and I want to be challenging for trophies.”