Neil Austin will make his long-awaited return to the Darlington side when they travel to Bradford City tomorrow, but fellow full-back Tim Ryan has been ruled out.

An ankle injury has restricted Austin's appearances this season to just two, the first game of the season and the match at Rotherham United a month later.

He limped out of the win over the Millers with a recurrence of the same injury and has missed all of Quakers' seven matches since.

But he has trained for the past two weeks and successfully came through 45 minutes of Tuesday's reserve game - a Durham Challenge Cup win over Brandon - so is now available to manager Dave Penney.

But Ryan is unavailable and will tomorrow miss his first league game of the season with a hamstring strain.

Austin's return to right-back is likely to mean that Rob Purdie, who has been acting as Austin's stand-in, will switch to the left-back berth to cover for Ryan who was subbed last weekend.

He came off against hometown team Stockport County on Sunday and Penney is disappointed as Ryan's absence means he is again prevented from playing his first-choice defence.

He said: "We're going to have to make a change on Saturday as Tim is injured, he's got hamstring injury. It's a blow because we wanted to keep the defence together.

"But, on the plus side, Neil played for 45 minutes on Tuesday so you lose one player but then you get one back.

"Neil trained all last week, we just wanted to give him some minutes on Tuesday, and when he came back against Rotherham he was excellent so if so if we start him on Saturday it won't be a problem."

Penney is also still without Pawel Abbott (knee) and David Stockdale (shoulder) while Kevin McBride is sidelined with a hamstring strain.

Former Quakers strikers Barry Conlon and Guylina Ndumbu-Nsungu are likely to line-up for Bradford City tomorrow but Matt Clarke is ruled out through injury.

Ben Clark admits he's enjoyed watching his Hartlepool United team-mates in action this season - but he couldn't be happier now he's part of it all again.

Kept on the sidelines by loan signing Godwin Antwi, Clark made an impressive first Football League start of the season in last week's win over Bristol Rovers.

He is likely to partner Micky Nelson in the back line when Pools visit leaders Swansea tomorrow.

"I like to watch the games and take notice of what is going on,'' admitted the central defender ahead of making the trip to South Wales today.

"It's been a different viewpoint for me so far this season. I think in this division you get a bit more time on the ball to play."