Darlington hoping for a period of home rule

Third-placed Stourbridge are today’s visitors, bidding to leapfrog table-topping Darlington, who in midweek moved into first position with a fine 2-1 victory at Ashton United.

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An injury-time winner by Graeme Armstrong saw Quakers win on the road for the second time in four days, and they are now unbeaten in seven matches in a row away from home.

But now comes an opportunity to improve their home record with a series of fixtures at Heritage Park. They have home advantage for the next four Saturdays, and should they make progress in the FA Trophy and are drawn at home in the following rounds then they would be at Heritage Park every weekend until December 12.

Martin Gray’s side have lost their last three games at the venue. Two defeats to Hyde United were followed a fortnight ago by Marine edging a closely-fought encounter 1-0 thanks to a second-half penalty. Since then, however, Darlington have moved above Blyth Spartans at the summit.

“We’re just starting to get a bit of momentum, but I don’t want to get too excited,” said Gray. “It was a very good three points on Tuesday, we’re at the right end of the table, but there’s such a long way to go.

“It’s nice to be around the top of the table. That’s what our ambition was, to be in the top five as long as we can all season. We set out ourselves high standards.”

Although in the lower half of the table, Ashton provided stubborn resistance, much more so than Mickleover seven days ago when Darlington won 5-1.

“We’re in a new league, we went to a team who are very well-organised and disciplined and ground out a result,” said Gray.

“One of the good things about the players is that we ask a lot of them and they listen. When they don’t we try to correct it, which is what we did at half-time on Tuesday.

“What we did in the first half on Saturday, we got back to doing in the second half on Tuesday.”

The performance last Saturday, which saw Quakers 5-0 up after an hour, delighted Gray. “The play in general, how well we kept the ball, it was how I want the team to play more consistently,” he said.

“If we can keep everyone fit and keep scoring goals, we’ve got competition for places which strengthens the squad.

“We said before the game that we need to be more consistent, we need to put a run together to make sure that we’re competing right towards the end of the season.”

However, today Gray is without two of his preferred defenders in Chris Hunter and Alan White, the former completing a ban and the latter beginning his, so the manager has a dilemma on his hands.

One player sure to start is winger Adam Mitchell, who last Saturday took his chance to shine having being benched for the previous three matches, and it was from his corner that Armstrong bagged the midweek winner.

Gray wants more of the same from the Sunderland academy product, saying: “He needs to do more. On Saturday he proved exactly how good he can be, but Adam’s got to be more consistent than that. When he plays as well as that he’s hard to stop.

“His energy, his movement, his work-rate, his desire to compete and his final balls were equally as good. It was a fantastic performance.

“He needs to do more for us first and foremost, and be more consistent. He can’t have a good game, an alright game and then a not so good game.

“He’s got to have eight or nine good games in a row and if he puts that into his game he’d be a real asset to our club.”

Today’s opponents Stourbridge have won five of their last six league matches, a run that includes a 3-0 victory over Blyth.