Darlington midfielder Phil Turnbull says that there is a lot more to come from both him and the rest of the Darlington team.

Quakers are looking for their second home win inside four days when Leicestershire side Barwell visit Heritage Park today, and Turnbull reckons that neither he nor the rest of his teammates have hit their best form yet.

“From a personal point of view, I’ve only played four or five games since January when I was injured at Gateshead, and it’s a matter of getting fine tuned again with more matches,” he said. “I feel that I’m contributing a lot, but I’m not at my best form yet.

“From a team level, I think there’s a lot more to come. The first game of the season was always going to be difficult. We lost 2-0, but we had more chances and we were the better side.

“We did very well in the first half against Frickley scoring twice, and in the last twenty minutes we played well and scored a third.

“I’ve looked at the quality of the players in our dressing room, and we should be looking to be promoted again as long as we keep playing well.

“There are a few lads in the dressing room, like Tom Portas and Terry Galbraith, who are capable of playing at a higher level than the Evo-Stik. Martin Gray has definitely assembled a very good squad.

“The manager is a great motivator and talker. He’s inspiring in what he says and is one of the best managers in that respect that I’ve worked with. He’s right in what he says.”

Turnbull, a former Hartlepool midfielder who played over 300 games for Gateshead, also pointed out that there can sometimes be more positives in a defeat than a victory.

“I’ve been in opening games of the season before in which I’ve been on the winning side, but I’ve been more than concerned at the end of the game about our overall performance,’’ he insisted.

“I honestly think if we play Buxton ten times, we would beat them on nine occasions. I was pleasantly surprised how superior we were on the day.

“We should be aiming now to make our home ground into a fortress, and I’d like to think that most teams won’t fancy coming here. We must make sure that we’re very professional in the way we approach games, and that we go out on the field with the mentality that we’re going to win and be hard to beat.”

Turnbull is likely to take his place in midfield today alongside Tom Portas in what might be an unchanged side. Striker David Dowson, unavailable in midweek, comes back into the reckoning.

Meanwhile, Gray expects another very tough game against Barwell, who won 5-1 at Sutton Coldfield in midweek.

“We’ve had Barwell watched, and they’re a very good footballing team, who get the ball down and pass it around well,’’ he said. “Both clubs had excellent results in midweek, so it should be a very good game.

“Our crowd was fantastic in midweek, I was really encouraged by the size of the crowd considering the weather conditions. Hopefully we’ll top the midweek figure nicely.”