AN improvement in results and a raft of players signing new contracts has increased positivity at Darlington, a club that is now approaching the climax of the campaign in a much better frame of mind than they were at the midway point and want to end the season on a high.

Joe Wheatley this week became the latest to put pen to paper, the midfield prospect following key players Stephen Thompson, Josh Heaton and Ben O’Hanlon in committing himself to Quakers for a further two seasons.

The aforementioned players have all played key roles during Darlington’s recent run of one defeat in ten games, six of them wins, which have eased relegation worries.

After a sticky start to their tenure, Tommy Wright and assistant Alan White have overseen a rise into mid-table, Quakers now occupying 11th place with seven games to go.

There remains work to be done, however, in securing the team’s status as a National League North club, while Wright wishes to continue the good form to end the season on a high.

“Some lads have been signing new contracts, but I don’t want them to take their foot off the pedal because they’ve done that,” said the manager, who today takes his team to AFC Telford, who are third-bottom and nine points behind Darlington.

“We’ve got to build momentum for next season, try to draw the fans back – we’ve been going into local schools to speak to the kids – and we want to keep that positive vibe around the football club.

“At the minute everything is positive around the club, we’re doing what we can to keep that going, we don’t want any negatives.”

A glance at Quakers’ league position suggests they could yet finish in the play-offs, and while Wright has not ruled it out he is aware it would take something remarkable to achieve a top-seven position.

“It’s not impossible,” he said. “We’ve got seven games left and if we were to win seven games we’d be in the mix. Whether or not we can win seven games off the back of the form we have just been on, that’s a challenge to the players.

“I’m not going to put pressure on them to try and get in the play-offs because that wasn’t in our remit when I came in.”

The maximum number of points Quakers can finish on is 67, which last season would only have been enough for tenth place. The seventh-placed team ended on 73.

Wright added: “I would hate to finish three points off the play-offs – that could be a reality and that would bug me all summer.

“But over a season it evens itself out – it’s easy to remember the points we lost late on, but what about the points that we gained?

“There was a time a few months ago when the atmosphere around the club was worrying. We were playing quite well, I don’t think there’s been a massive change in our performances, but we weren’t getting results.

“Everything was going against us, and now everything is going for us.”

Wright watched Telford on Tuesday, when they won 1-0 at Alfreton, and he expects a difficult game today against a side who were the first to defeat Darlington this season, winning 1-0 at Blackwell Meadows in August.

He said: “Tuesday gave them a bit of hope and confidence knowing that they’ve still got games in hand on teams above them. They’re not dead and buried. Gainsborough are looking in more doubt “They’ve got a young squad but they’ve got some good players in there. They signed Amari Morgan-Smith from York, so they have some quality and they’ll be disappointed if they’re still in that bottom three with two or three games to go, but I don’t think they will be.

“Saturday is a big one for us in terms of how serious are we about pulling away from the bottom.

“As quickly as you pull away from down there, you can quickly get dragged back in. We’ve got seven games to go, we want to finish on a high.”

Meanwhile, Wright revealed that striker Harvey Saunders has this week been on trial with Championship club Barnsley.

He said: “He’s been working really hard with me and he deserves it. I wanted to give him a bit of experience and give him the chance to showcase himself.

“He’s always knocking on my door asking why he’s not playing, and the simple answer is that we’re playing one centre-forward and that’s Reece Styche. When you score as many goals as he does and bring as much to the table then you’ll play.”