We are putting a decent run together at Darlington with just one defeat in our last six games. We are still at the wrong end of the table, but we are confident we can start to climb in the next few weeks.

It shows just how far the lads have come when we were disappointed to draw away from home on Saturday.

One lad making the headlines for us is Clark Keltie. Since coming into the side he has been outstanding and looks to have a very bright future.

But one thing he must do is change his goal celebration. The lads give him plenty of stick for removing his shirt so I don't think he will be doing that again.

It's a good job he only removed his shirt or there would definitely have been a few raised eyebrows to say the least...but I won't go into that.

Referees, and Paul Durkin in particular, have again been in the headlines. I think he made the wrong decision to send Sol Campbell off and in my opinion he was too far away from the incident.

It puzzles me that a footballer is classed as past it when he reaches 35, yet there aren't many referees under that age and they need to cover more ground than most of the players if they keep up with play. It would be interesting to see their fitness test results against us footballers.

On the subject of referees, I am suspended from Saturday's game, having picked up five bookings.

Not many defenders now can go through a season without picking up a suspension.

Fair enough, if you deliberately try to hurt someone, but some of the bookings these days are a joke and a little bit of common sense rather than sticking to the letter of the law would, I'm sure, go down better with most players.

This week I've had to give up my role coaching the Middlesbrough Under-11s due to my extra responsibilities at Darlington. I just did not have the time or the energy to do both roles as well as going to college twice a week.

The lads have been excellent since I took the role back in August and it was a very hard decision for me to make but, obviously, Darlington and my family come first and they were not seeing a great deal of me either.

I'm sure a lot of the lads there will go on and have good careers and I will be popping down from time to time to see how they are getting on.

The ability levels of some of the lads have to be seen to be believed and it has been a pleasure coaching them.

Published: 26/11/2002