Our players showed bags of spirit at Lincoln on Saturday -- and there's no doubt that we'll have to do the same tonight when we face another difficult Nationwide Division Three match at Darlington.

To come back three times against Lincoln and get a 3- 3 draw showed, yet again, what a genuinely good spirit there is in the Aggborough camp.

Yesterday, in training, the players were really bubbling and buzzing and can't wait to have a crack at tonight's tough test at Darlington.

There's certainly a great camaraderie between the players and I believe that will always be there whenever we need to bring it out.

And that, of course, is more than likely to be at Darlington tonight. Darlington are a good side, but if we can get ourselves up to the tempo that we finished the game at Lincoln then we'll give them a good game.

I know people are saying what good entertainment value it was in the second half at Lincoln, but games like that are very difficult to enjoy when you are a manager.

I thought in the first half we probably put more quality balls into their penalty box than we did in the second half when we scored our three goals.

But really it's all about desire in both penalty areas. It's that desire to get the final touch to score a goal or to get the final touch to stop a ball going into the net. To be honest that wasn't there in the first half and I believe if it had have been then we would probably have gone in at half time at least level.

Then, of course, there's the disappointment of getting yourself back into the game and letting the opposition score again.

I felt that if we could get ourselves a goal then we would settle down and start playing near the ability level that we have in the side. But every time we got back on terms we conceded a goal straight away.

But, as I say, the spirit was great and I was delighted with that.

It took us a long time to really get going and, although we played some tidy stuff in the first half, we upped the tempo in the second and the spirit within the side got us back to earn a point.

By the way, I thought our new player John Durnin made a difference to us because of his movement and hold-up play. He finds himself time and space and that's something our strikers haven't been able to do this season.

There's no doubt he gives us something different. He's not a big, bustling centre forward who will win headers and cause havoc that way, but he'll cause problems for defences and we've got players capable of finding him when he goes into those threatening positions.

I must also mention our two substitutes Tony Bird and Paul Webb who came on just before the goals started to rattle in on Saturday.

I thought they both did well after replacing Stewart Hadley and Ian Bogie.

Everybody knows we have had our problems up front and I had hoped that Hadley, with his physical presence, would have taken some of the pressure off Durnin. But he was way off the pace and credit must go to Bird when he came on and made things happen.

Bogie was also way off the pace and when Webb came on he won headers, challenged people and just upped the tempo for us.

It was just what we needed because we know we can play at a higher tempo and we are fit enough to sustain that for the full 90 minutes.

And, in fairness, it needed that double substitution to get us going.

Anyway, Saturday's performance is now water under the bridge and supporters can rest assured that we'll be doing our best tonight to get us back into wining ways.

Then, on Saturday it's Exeter at home and the following Tuesday we entertain table-toppers Chesterfield so there's no shortage of action coming up!