Darlington complete their Heritage Park triple header this evening when they take on landlords Bishop Auckland.

After seeing off both West Auckland and Celtic Nation on Saturday and Monday respectively, tonight’s fixture is the third inside five days at their Bishop Auckland base and manager Martin Gray wants to see an improvement.

His team was not at its best against Nation and had to grind out a 1-0 win, which was the club’s 17th successive victory.

Win number 18 would take the club one step closer to promotion - if they win all four of their remaining matches then second-placed Spennymoor Town will not be able to catch them, despite having seven games in hand.

The return of Terry Galbraith will boost Quakers, who missed his driving force in midfield on Monday.

“He was rested, but comes back into contention,” said Gray. “He’s a big player for us, but Jonny Davis came in on Monday and did well. He put in a real shift over 90 minutes.

“We’ve got a good squad and it’s not just about one player, all of the squad are important.

“It was a case of keeping everybody right and managing everybody because they all want to play, which I can understand due to the run we’re having.

“We’ve got a great togetherness and that’s proven when lads go out of the team because they react in the right way.”

Gray has made a single change to the line-up in each of Quakers’ past seven matches.

He added: “I’m not one to rotate, I play what I feel is the best starting XI for each game and you can’t beat momentum.

“We’ve got four games to go and players would play every night of the week when they’re in a position to challenge for something.”

Tonight’s game will be the 47th that the teams combined have played at Heritage Park, and the pitch is showing signs of wear.

Gray said: “The pitch isn’t great, but Celtic Nation played well enough on it so I’m not going to use that as an excuse and we played well on it on Saturday too. We’ll get a response on Wednesday and we’ll play better.”

Seventh-placed Bishop Auckland’s form is patchy having won two and lost two of their past seven league games, but they do boast 31-goal Andy Johnson in their line-up. Furthermore, one of their draws was against Spennymoor.

He scored on the opening day of the season when the sides met, Quakers winning 3-1 after Bishop defender Chris Renshaw had been red-carded.

They are classed as the away team this evening for a match that will attract an attendance well in excess of the 1,000 or so that usually watch Quakers during midweek games at Heritage Park.