DARLINGTON will hope the festivities do not clog up the Twickenham machinery even further this week as they prepare to get their season back on the rails in Saturday's rearranged match at Morley.

They were unable to gain clearance to play either prop Dan Miller or fly half Rory Wood last weekend and were devoid of any spark in losing 12-5 at home to Hull Ionians.

Wood is back from a spell of playing and coaching in Aspen, Colorado, but although he is one of the club's own products and has been registered before, the tedious re-registration has yet to be completed.

He could have taken over the goal-kicking, which remains an enormous problem in the absence of fly half Charlie Rayner with an ankle injury.

The Miller saga rumbled on with the failure to gain RFU approval for him to play now that the club have appealed against his eight-week suspension.

The club's own handling of the situation hasn't helped, and while looking at that they also urgently need to hold an inquest into what has gone wrong this season.

After finishing fifth in National Three North last season, they have gone backwards and their recent climb away from trouble suffered a big setback as they failed to complete a double against a Hull side who have looked favourites to finish in the second relegation spot.

Darlington do not have the depth to cover for the absence of key men and they were further disrupted by the late withdrawal through illness of lock Andy Harston.

This should have prompted skipper Richard Snowball to return to the second row, but instead the gap was filled by Catterick-based Fijian Joe Naga, a back row man who has just recovered from a knee operation.

Snowball will undoubtedly make an excellent No 6, which is apparently where the England Counties selectors would prefer to see him, but he has to play wherever is best for the team.

That must be in the second row, especially with two more back row men, Matt Holmes and Phil Dawson, due to return soon.

Darlington looked doomed on Saturday from the moment hooker Dan Oselton, another key man, suffered an early knee injury. He soldiered on until early in the second half, but with Oselton and Naga struggling, and the line-out malfunctioning, they couldn't develop any momentum.

Scrum half Sean Richardson tried to get them going forward with some neat box kicks, but he persisted too long with the tactic when Darlington really needed to show some urgency with ball in hand.

They found it very late in the game when they were 12-0 down and Richardson had gone off, with Craig Lee switching to scrum half and Chris Barber from full back to No 10.

Barber worked a clever loop in a good move which took play almost to the line, where Lee took a quick penalty to drive over from three metres.

With only five minutes left it did no more than earn a bonus point for getting the gap down to seven points, and Darlington didn't deserve any more.

All Hull's points came from easy penalties, the first coming on the half hour after Naga was sin-binned for pulling a maul down.

The Hull hooker soon followed him and Darlington twice kicked penalties to the corner, only to be thwarted in their efforts to drive over, partly by former West Hartlepool veteran Mick Watson going straight to ground.

Darlington also threatened a pushover try from a five-metre scrum, only for No 8 Alan Brown to knock on, and with no kicker in the team it was impossible to see where any points would come from.

It remained 3-0 until the 65th minute, then Hull's second penalty seemed to convince them they could win and they quickly added two more from close range.

Other than the late try, the only consolation for Darlington was that Hull won't win many more games.

* Darlington's next home game, on January 5, is against Tynedale, whose only defeat in ten games was at Mowden Park.

The Corbridge club avenged their early-season home defeat by Blaydon with a 24-10 win at Crow Trees on Saturday, which will send Blaydon into the new year knowing it will be no easy stroll to promotion.

They are still top, but the gap is down to three points over Rugby Lions, Fylde and Tynedale, who again showed they can be dangerous without both skipper Phil Belgian and Newcastle Academy fly half Gavin Beasley.

Blaydon are unsure how long Martin Shaw will be out with his groin injury.

He was sorely missed, while Chilean international Juan Pablo Guzman did not have the happiest of debuts at fly half.

He was replaced in the second half by Richard Windle, who misunderstood a communication from the bench when a penalty was awarded with the score 12-10.

The chance to go ahead was spurned and when the kick to the corner produced nothing Tynedale went straight up the field to score a converted try and lead 19-10 with 18 minutes left.

They scored again at the death when a poor Blaydon kick allowed Hamish Smales to counter-attack from long range.

* Darlington Mowden Park recorded their first away victory of the season when they won 19-12 at West Park St Helens.

They produced a superb first half performance to lead 19-3 and after conceding three more penalties they hung on heroically after having three men sin-binned in ten minutes.

The first to go was lock Iain Robinson for retaliation after being kneed, but when hooker Sean Buckley and flanker Ben Lonsdale followed for persistent infringements it took Mowden's yellow card count to 19 for the season.

They were held together by No 8 Jason Smithson, who defied his adductor muscle injury to survive the 80 minutes and had a huge influence.

Mowden fell behind to a tenth-minute penalty and conceded three more in the second half, but inbetween scored three tries, with full back Anthony Mellalieu adding two conversions.

Smithson scored from a line-out, Mellalieu finished a good backs move and scrum half Andy Foreman nipped down the blind side to score following a line-out drive.