Quakers train on plastic (From The Northern Echo)

Quakers train on plastic

12:16pm Tuesday 7th February 2012 in Darlington FC News By Craig Stoddart, Deputy Sports Editor

Darlington are planning on playing on plastic for the remainder of the week with to the wintry weather putting their usual training ground out of action.

East Durham College are allowing the squad to use their all-weather pitch as Quakers prepare for this weekend's game at home to Wrexham.

On Saturday Darlington's match at Mansfield was postponed and they instead played a friendly at the college in Peterlee against Spennymoor Town, though the conditions meant a full 90 minutes were not possible.

Craig Liddle used the match to give new loan arrival Liam Bagnall a run-out at right-back.

The interim boss said: "The weather was that bad it got abandoned after 75 minutes, but it was better than running and I think they prefer to play than go for a run in the woods.

"Liam looked well and had a decent game. It probably benefited him more than anyone as he got used to his new team-mates which benefits him.

"He's a tough lad. He'll put his foot in and will fight and scrap for things. When you look at him he looks quite slight, but he's very aggressive and he gave a good account of himself."

But goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, a team-mate of Bagnall's at Sunderland, was excused from the action as was Marc Bridge-Wilkinson.

Liddle explained: "Jordan sometimes gets a reaction with his back because obviously it's a different type of surface to grass.

"So as a precaution we left him out and Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, at his age, his body doesn't enjoy playing on them sort of surfaces so he was left out and Dale Hopson was ill.

"He'd been ill all week and would've missed the Mansfield game it had been on."

3G artificial surfaces have becoming increasingly popular and, on Saturday, Durham City were the only senior non-league club to be able to stage a game.

Liddle added: "I'm not an expert on it, but it's massively different from the days when the likes of QPR used to have it all them years back and it's not too far from the real thing.

"We've got the pitch booked at East Durham College booked and they've been unbelievably helpful in allowing us to have it around their timetable.

"We'll use that for the majority of the week because the grass it frozen."

Only five of Darlington's first team members were in training yesterday and they, along with the youth team, started the week with a demanding run that led to some light-hearted comments from players on Twitter.

But Liddle said: "That wasn't a run, that was just a warm-up!

"It wasn't as bad as they were making out and there's worse to come for the rest of the week, put it that way."