A WEEK after starting the season by beating a full-time club owned by millionaires, Darlington hope to repeat the trick today as they take on a team backed by a EuroMillions winner when Alfreton head to County Durham.

They have become a full-time club since the end of last season when Lee Mullen, winner of £4.8m in 2011, joined the Derbyshire outfit as a director and have gone on to sign a raft of players.

Their latest recruit came yesterday, right-back Bradley Wood joining from Lincoln City, with whom he won the Conference title last season and played in the Imps’ FA Cup ties at Burnley and Arsenal.

Today the 25-year-old will play at the comparatively less celebrated Blackwell Meadows, where Darlington aim to make it three wins from three, having beaten Salford City last Saturday and Gainsborough Trinity on Wednesday with two contrasting performances.

Whereas they were solid at Salford, Wednesday bore all the hallmarks of last season’s less-than-convincing defending, something that frustrated manager Martin Gray.

“You’ve got to be stronger and more switched on, you can’t allow teams back in the game when you go 3-1 up,” bemoaned the manager, after seeing his team win 4-3.

“It became 3-2, then 3-3. Before you know it it’s become a game of tennis, backwards and forwards. We should’ve closed the game out at 3-1, and we’ve got to get back to that.

“It’s individuals not doing their jobs. There’s other aspects of the game that crept in, but it’s about individuals – I’m not naming players, they know themselves – and we’ve got to make sure we’re better on Saturday.

“I’ll still tell the players what went wrong, but they’ll already know themselves.”

Gray is contemplating making a change or two, and he has no shortage of options.

Defenders Jordan Richards and Kevin Burgess both played for the reserves on Wednesday, as did midfielders Tom Portas and new signing Joe Wheatley.

But Nathan Cartman is out of contention having joined Farsley Celtic on loan for a month, and he makes his debut today against Coalville Town, one division below Darlington.

He had become fifth-choice in Gray’s squad, behind Mark Beck, James Caton, Scott Fenwick and Harvey Saunders.

Caton missed three first-half chances on Wednesday, but Beck got off the mark for the season with a header, and Gray was pleased with his attack, which frequently got behind Gainsborough.

“We’ve got goals in the team, there’s no question about that,” added the manager. “If we’d been clinical it could’ve been five, six or seven.”

He was also satisfied with the new playing surface too, saying: “The pitch played fantastically well, the ground staff at Blackwell Meadows have done a great job. They’ve worked very hard in a tight six-eight week window.

“The pitch will only benefit us as the season goes on.”

Midfielder Phil Turnbull was similarly effusive, though feels the team did not make use of the playing surface.

“The pitch was brilliant, spot on,” said Quakers’ skipper, who was among the most vocal critics of Blackwell’s surface last season.

“It got a little bit of dew on it in the second half which made it a bit better, but we probably didn’t utilise it.

“We were too direct at times, we need to slow it down and play at our pace – starve the opposition of the ball and kill them off, because that’ll deflate them psychologically.

“But’s it’s the beginning of the season, we’re not going to be fine-tuned yet and we’ve got two wins.

“We’re not firing yet and we’ve got six points so we can’t complain about that.”

Alfreton beat Blyth 2-0 seven days ago before losing 3-1 to Boston on Tuesday, after which manager John McDermott warned his team would be heavily beaten today without an improvement.

“We better turn up because if we play like that they’ll give us a spanking,” he said. “They are a great side, strong and move the ball well. We’ve got to be 100 per cent better then Tuesday if we are going to do anything this year and we need to respond.

“I won’t tolerate that kind of performance. I’ve been backed by the chairman and the fans have been great with us and they’ve had to suffer over the years by watching that kind of performance on Tuesday.

“If we are going to get beat I want us to get beat playing my way, that was not how I play on Tuesday by booming it and I apologise for the performance.”