After Darlington suffered a 2-0 defeat at Bath City on Saturday, Michael Brough made it clear that the players are responsible, and not manager Mark Cooper, for the poor start to the season.

He completed his first 90 minutes since 2010 after overcoming a knee injury, but his day was overshadowed by Quakers' performance and an altercation with a fan.

At full-time some of Darlington's travelling support made their feelings known as Quakers left the field.

He said: "I was really excited to start, knowing that I could be playing my first 90 minutes. I came through it fine, but all I can think about is how poor we were as a team.

"We've let the management and the fans down.

"The fans were venting their frustration at the finish and out of frustration I had a go at one of them for having a go at me individually because I didn't think what he said was on.

"Someone said to me ‘where's your heart, where's your desire?', but they're things you can't question in me so I had a bit of a pop back. But I understand their frustration because that performance as a team was nowhere near good enough.

"They've paid their money and they've come to support us, which we appreciate massively and we haven't given them anything to shout about.

"The fans should blame the players because we have under-performed. I said it the other week that it's been the problem and I'll say it again.

"Last Saturday we did what we were asked, it wasn't pretty but sometimes that's what you've got to do. Today we set out with exactly the same format and it didn't work for us because we didn't show the same application as we did last week."