ANOTHER midweek without a match has offered Darlington more time to work on their defending.

The three conceded in last Saturday’s draw at Stockport County took the tally to 40 goals against in this season’s 26 league fixtures so far.

Unlike last season, however, very few of those fixtures have been played on a day other than a weekend, Quakers having not had a midweek evening league match since September.

The schedule has enabled manager Martin Gray to spend time coaching his players, who are at Eastbourne Sports Complex on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, though he admits the training has not proven as beneficial as he would have liked.

His team are at Blackwell Meadows tomorrow against Curzon Ashton, a team Darlington defeated 2-1 in August in a rare midweek match, and he said: “I’ve enjoyed the chance to do some work with the players on the training ground, so it’s been a real benefit to us.

“I’d like to have had more clean sheets on the back of it, but we have worked really hard on those aspects of the game and we’ve got to put into practice the work we do in the week.

“We show glimpses of it in games, but it’s lapses in concentration that is costing us. Individual errors.

“I’m not pointing the finger at anyone, but it’s about remaining focused from first to last. If you make more right than wrong decisions you’ve got a chance of staying in the game.

“It’s the same in front of goal, you score first and it changes the mentality of the team.”

Gray expects Curzon, who are 15th, to be buoyed by last weekend’s result when they caused an upset by inflicting only a third defeat of the season on leaders AFC Fylde.

“These results happen from time to time, but I still can’t see anyone stopping Fylde,” said Gray, who will tomorrow give David Ferguson his first start since signing from Shildon.

“They’ll come up here full of confidence on the back of that result, even though their form is indifferent.

“They had a good FA Cup run, they beat York City on the way and nearly beat Wimbledon, so they’re a team that will come and have a right go, but we’ve got to make sure we get three points to keep us in the pack.”

Darlington hold their annual meeting this evening at the Blackwell Grange Hotel (6.30pm).

Accounts for the last financial year will be tabled, shareholders will be asked to vote on the reappointment of the directors as well as the change of playing name back to “Darlington”.