Quakers hope to reproduce sparkling form against Harrogate

Quakers produced arguably their best performance of the season in October when they swept Harrogate aside by 4-1 at Wetherby Road with Josh Gillies one of the stars of the show, to give them their third straight win at the time and 14 goals in the process.

Quakers haven’t reached the same standard consistently since, but there are promising signs again after two good away performances at Chorley and Boston that have put them seventh in the table, just four points behind the play off spots. And with four home games in the next six, then this could be Quakers’ chance to make a big impact on the play offs and a possible fourth promotion in five seasons.

“It was a great performance down there earlier in the season,” said manager Martin Gray. “It seems a long time away now but it was at that time when we put a really fantastic run together. That’s something that we’ve talked about in the dressing room, and we know that we have to do a similar job again to give ourselves a chance of getting into the play offs.

“We have a run of fixtures now against teams below us in the table, but we’re only as good as our last game, so if we can build on the performance last week against Boston and maintain the form of the last two or three weeks, that will be a good start going into the Harrogate game.

“We must make sure that we put in a fantastic performance and give the crowd something to really get behind us. I want the players to come out of the blocks flying, and hopefully take the game to Harrogate.

“We’d love to have a big crowd at the game, creating plenty of atmosphere. We took over a thousand fans with us to Harrogate for the game there earlier in the season, and they played a major part. The noise that they generated really encouraged the players, and we’d love to hear the same again, especially as we’re encouraging fans to bring a friend along to today’s game.

“I always want to improve, and I think that’s what we’ve done over the last couple of weeks. We’ve steadied the ship a little bit, and it’s important that we start to drive it forward again. There hasn’t been an awful lot wrong and performances haven’t been too far adrift. Nobody has given us a good thumping, but I believe that we’ve become a little more solid as a team and that’s what we were crying out for, and in turn performances have improved.”

Victory today against Simon Weaver’s team could continue a good run of victories, as Quakers only have two teams currently above them to play this season – AFC Fylde and Salford – while they have four home games coming up in the next six, with Altrincham, Brackley and Bradford PA following today’s game.

Harrogate include two former Darlington players in their squad, Joe Colbeck and Ben Parker, while keeper Chris Elliott played in a couple of friendlies for Quakers at the start of the season.

Darlington centre half Gary Brown believes that Quakers have become more solid in recent weeks. “It was a very tough game last week. Boston made it very hard for us in the second half when they went two up front, but we’ve worked very hard on our shape in the last couple of weeks. We stuck to our game plans against Chorley and Boston, and got our rewards.

“Since the Chorley game, we’ve looked more solid as a unit. The effort has always been there, but maybe we’ve concentrated a little bit more and it’s paid dividends.

Our end goal is to win promotion. We have four home games coming up in the next six matches, so if we can do well in those and the two away games, then who knows.

“But anybody can beat anybody in this league. It just needs one player to go asleep for a couple of minutes and we’ll be punished, and that is a fact.

“We might have beaten Harrogate 4-1 back in October at their place when we played some of our best football of the season, but they’ll be coming up here with something to prove against us. We embarrassed them down at our place, so they’ll want their own back. We’ll have to be on our mettle ready for them.”