DARLINGTON assistant manager Terry Mitchell is hoping Quakers can gain some momentum from last Saturday’s FA Cup win when they face promoted Hebburn at Blackwell Meadows today.
Quakers survived a scare at Redcar Town in the FA Cup last Saturday when they came back from 2-1 down to win 4-2, and now Mitchell is hoping that they can now pick up their momentum and collect their first home points of the season at the fifth time of asking. They’re also hoping to move out of the bottom two.
“You make your home ground your fortress and pick up points away, but we’re doing the opposite. Counting the FA Cup game, we’ve had three away wins," said Mitchell.
“We’re desperate to get that win that the fans deserve because they’ve been outstanding ever since Steve and I came to the club, and we want to reward them. We need to get our home form up and running.
“I thought we scored some good goals last week to put us through into the next round of the Cup. We’ve got to hope now that the momentum will help us keep that feeling that everybody likes.”
Mitchell knows plenty about Hebburn from the past, particularly when he was in the opposite technical area to them for Consett in the FA Vase final six years ago.
“Hebburn are a great club, they’ve come up through the ranks to this league, and I had a great day at Wembley against them," he said.
“It was outstanding how they won the Northern Premier League last season, Bobby Moore, their manager, has kept quite a few players from last season, and strengthened nicely. They’ve had an unbelievable start to the season, and they’ve got some really good players that I know about.
“I’ve watched two or three of their games. We know they have threats in various areas, but they’ve got areas where we think we can hurt them as well.”
Midfielder Jonah Lowes and defender Hayden Atkinson will both return to the squad after being left out last week at their parent club Carlisle’s insistence, while Jacob Render, signed last week from Leeds, will probably be included in the squad. Aidan Rutledge will also return from suspension,
The two clubs have met before, back in Quakers’ Northern League days in season 2012-13. Quakers won 1-0 at Heritage Park, then a few days later won the reverse game 7-1 on their way to the title and promotion.
Hebburn were relegated to the Northern League second division in 2015, where they stayed four seasons until they won the first of four promotions in nine years. They will include three former Darlington players in their squad: Matty Cornish, Tom Allan and Elliot Forbes.
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