TEN games to go, ten opportunities to pick up the points required for Darlington to reach the play-offs.

A minimum of 70 points are usually required for a top-five finish in the National League North, sometimes quite a few more, and Quakers are currently on 54.

So it would be fair to suggest Martin Gray’s men require at least six wins from their remaining matches, and today’s trip to second-bottom Stalybridge Celtic is one of six against clubs in the lower half of the table.

Such a schedule, Gray admits, gives Quakers ample opportunity to claim the points required to secure a place in the end-of-season shake-up, and he said: “The play-offs are in our hands as far as I’m concerned, it’s up to us to get into them.

“We’ve got some good games on paper, but it’s up to us to turn them into wins.

“I’m having a big meeting with the players at training, and we’re going to look at exactly what we have to do in each of the games we’ve got left.

“We’ve got ten games, so it’s ten cup finals for me.”

Quakers, however, can ill afford a repeat of last week’s shambles at Worcester City, when they managed to throw away victory against a team that had not won in 14 matches.

Two late Worcester goals tipped the game in their favour until Harvey Saunders’ stoppage-time header rescued a point, making it 2-2, by scoring Darlington’s 70th goal of the season.

In the top seven divisions, only AFC Fylde (90) and Forest Green Rovers (71) have scored more, but it’s conceding them that has proven problematic and clean sheets have been hard to come by.

No team in the top half of the division has kept fewer, while even third-bottom Worcester have conceded fewer than the 51 Darlington have shipped.

“We conceded two soft goals last week,” admitted Gray, who can call on the fit-again Liam Marrs today, and will make changes to his starting XI.

“I’ve been told that we’ve scored almost the most goals in the country, so there’s nothing wrong with that end of the pitch.

“But we cannot keep conceding goals as we have been. If we keep doing it then it’s going to cost us, it’s that simple.

“There will be changes, one or two. I know what team I want to play, I’ve got a team in mind that I think can win the game.

“We’ll go down there and look at the pitch, but we know what it’s going to be like.”

The pitch is heavily sanded at Stalybridge’s Bower Fold ground, where postponements mean they have not played since beating Halifax 1-0 on January 7.

The win, Stalybridge’s only clean sheet at home this season, stands as their sole victory in their last 12 league matches, while they have not played at all for three weeks as last Saturday’s game at Alfreton was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

Gray added: “The pitch is in a poor condition by all accounts. Harry Dunn was supposed to go down there on Tuesday but then it was called off.

“They’ve had their last two postponed, but the weather down there has been okay since Tuesday so fingers crossed for Saturday.”