DARLINGTON return to training this evening still sore from Saturday’s shocking 3-0 home defeat to South Shields, a loss which was “embarrassing” and came about due to a lack of effort, believes midfielder Phil Turnbull, who knows the performance was nowhere near good enough.

The loss saw Quakers knocked out of the FA Cup, with yesterday’s third qualifying round draw giving Shields a home tie with York City on September 30, a game that would have been much-anticipated and seen a high attendance at Blackwell Meadows had Darlington won at the weekend.

Instead, they have a blank Saturday after travelling to Boston United this coming weekend, when manager Martin Gray will make changes to his starting XI and demand a huge improvement from his team, which has been in patchy form and had some poor results for a while.

It reached its nadir on Saturday when only goalkeeper Adam Bartlett and Turnbull emerged with any credit.

A first midweek without a game for a month could be of benefit, allowing players to recover from injuries, while Gray will spend both this evening and Thursday’ session attempting to instigate a turnaround in form.

However, Turnbull said: “He could put a session on every night of the week but he cannot teach what was missing on Saturday – hunger, desire, pride. That should come from within.

“We are going through a bad time, but at any level of football if you don’t work harder than the opposition you’ll lose.

“South Shields are a good footballing side, but the scary thing is that they worked harder than us.

“In my time at Darlington, we might not always play unbelievable football, we might be direct, but one thing you can guarantee is that no team will get an easy game, but on Saturday South Shields got an easy game against us and that’s embarrassing.

“The supporters can’t usually say that the team don’t graft their socks off, but on Saturday we fully deserved to get booed because they didn’t even get that.

“The manager pointed out after the game that some players were having to run past others to close someone down, things like that were happening.

“Shields were passing it about you would’ve thought they were from two leagues above, but that only happened because we allowed them to do it.

“In all of the Darlington teams I’ve been in nobody gets a second to breathe normally, but we were letting them pass the ball about.

“We gave them too much respect and we weren’t nasty enough in our play.”

Gray said in the aftermath of defeat that players would be leaving the club, and Turnbull chimed in, questioning the attitude of some team-mates.

“Going into the game, with Shields being two leagues below, I don’t know if everyone had the right mentality,” he said.

“I don’t know whether people thought ‘we’ll turn up and win this game’. I knew that wouldn’t be the case because I know how Shields are doing and I know their players, but you can’t have that mindset at this level.

“You’ve got to be switched on but Saturday was nowhere near good enough, it was embarrassing to be honest.

“I don’t think getting knocked out hurt people enough.”

Going into the match, three days earlier Darlington had beaten FC United 3-0 to end a seven-match streak without a win.

Turnbull added: “There will be confidence issues there because we haven’t had a great start, but the only way we can get out of this is by working harder than we ever have.

“We need to make the game tough for the opposition, and that’s what we didn’t do on Saturday, there was a lack of desire.

“I felt for Martin because you could see how hurt he was after the match.”

A post-match inquest lasted an hour, Gray delivering some home truths in the changing room, and Turnbull defended the manager, who has come under attack in some quarters.

“We’re in training Tuesday and Thursday and it’ll be tough, but you’d expect that to be honest,” said the midfielder.

“If he wanted to run our socks off, or he wanted to work on team shape for five hours and someone complained I would gladly see Martin knock them clean out.

“He was fuming on Saturday, I felt for him, I could see how hurt he was.

“The last few weeks haven’t been great and he’s defended the lads, which is what a good manager does, it takes the pressure off the players, but he was at the end of his tether on Saturday. He can’t take the blame all the time.

“Now and again there’ll be bad performances, you can’t play well every week, but putting effort in should be a given.”