Alun Armstrong must consider the demands of playing twice in four days in Darlington’s pursuit of the play-offs when selecting his starting XI for the first part of his team’s Easter doubleheader.

David Wheater, Danny Rose and Cameron Thompson are more likely to start on Monday against second-placed Gateshead, when Armstrong will make changes in an effort to keep his team fresh.

First up is Curzon Ashton at Blackwell Meadows on Good Friday, and Armstrong said: “Wheats and Cameron have trained but Rosey hasn’t yet so won’t play. He’ll do a bit of work on Friday to see if we can get him ready for Gateshead.

“We’ll have to see how Wheats is. He hasn’t had any reaction to his injury, that’s great, but we’ve also got Danny Ellis back. Jarrett Rivers is back now too, so we’ve got options available again.

“Rosey is a big miss and I like to rotate the midfield, but we’ll see how he is on Monday.

“Having Cameron back is huge. He’ll probably not be available to start on Friday, but if he gets another training session under his belt he might be okay for Monday.”

While Quakers are eighth and one point away from a play-off position, Curzon's season is effectively already over, neither involved in the play-off hunt or attempting to avoid relegation. They are 14th, have lost five of their last seven games and scored one goal in that time.

Armstrong remains wary, however, and bottom-of-the-table Guiseley's shock win at play-off hopefuls Kettering on Tuesday demonstrated what can happen.

He said: “I know they’re on a bad run, but these are the tough games – look at Guiseley the other night.

“Darlington is always a scalp for anyone in this league. Teams raise their games against us, you speak to any players who have played against us and they will say it’s a massive game for them because of the fanbase and where the club used to be.

“There are no easy games in this division and that’s why it’s so hard to get promoted.

“There’ll be lots of twists and turns yet, lots of surprises in the next few weeks. I’m just concentrating on what we do, and if we do drop points here and there we will just get on with it.

“All we can do is focus on ourselves and hopefully get the right result.”