If the Hodgson family of Denton, Co Durham, fancied a game of Monopoly on Saturday night they will have found one vital piece missing.

Earlier in the afternoon, the man of the house had already played the 'get out of jail free' card.

Struggling to score goals and having won one game in nine, Cheltenham were 1-0 up and the prospects were bleak for an ineffective Darlington side seemingly assured of continuing a woeful run of form.

But, after 52 dreadful minutes, David Hodgson threw the dice once again and this time came up with a double six.

Or a 3-1 win to be precise thanks to two substitutions and a change in formation that invigorated Quakers and left fans wondering why they had not started the game in such manner.

The introduction of Neil Wainwright and Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu and, most vitally, a switch to a conventional 4-4-2 in place of the untested diamond formation Darlington began with, provided Hodgson with a great response to his growing band of critics.

Midway through the second half, and with Cheltenham still ahead, a small group of supporters rounded on the manager with a chorus of "Hodgy what's the score," also heard last week at Bury.

Three goals later Hodgson would surely have loved to respond with the same question.

Aside from sporadic booing, the atmosphere was flat for the first half, while passing the ball around the defence followed by a back-pass was greeted with boos as early as the fourth minute.

However, with groans and sniping at Hodgson becoming increasingly apparent in recent weeks, it is easy to see why supporters have grown so disillusioned.

Expectations remain realistically high after last season, so winning only one game in nine was bad, but to do it by playing so poorly has been hard to take.

Like last year, Hodgson has tinkered with his team selection and used various systems with Saturday seeing the fifth formation already this season. Only once has he kept the same team from the previous match.

There have been injuries and a suspension to Matt Clarke, but the reluctance to show faith in a particular tactic and first XI must do little to instil confidence in players or encourage consistent performances, both individually and collectively.

Above all else it demonstrates Hodgson is still searching for the magic formula to lift Quakers back into the promotion hunt.

But, more immediately, he needed to end a dire run of form in which Darlington had not scored in open play in nine hours.

Defeats are always easier to take when a team has given a good account of itself, but passing the ball around defence impresses nobody, and neither does throwing away leads to lose at mid-table Conference teams.

It's primarily for these reasons that Saturday saw Darlington attract their third lowest attendance for a Saturday game at their relatively new ground.

But football fans, especially at Darlington, live in hope, and Quakers' mischievous man in charge of the PA system did his best to lift to spirits pre-match by playing the Beatles' Taxman, though he later reckoned he had meant to play Hey Jude . . .

At half-time the poignant soundtrack continued with current hit, Turn Your Car Around, and by that stage most fans were wishing they'd done just that an hour earlier.

In their hooped shirts Darlington look like convicts and the players deserved a night in the cells after the first 45 minutes. Being in prison would certainly have been preferable to watching a criminally bad first half.

With supporters hypnotised into a state of disbelief, at the break the man on the microphone announced that Hartlepool were losing then repeated himself - presumably in an attempt to waken everybody up.

The second half saw Hodgson ditch the midfield diamond and revert to 4-4-2 with Wainwright on the left-wing, Simon Johnson on the opposite flank with Ndumbu-Nsungu upfront alongside Akpo Sodje, and the change in tactics stunned Cheltenham.

They were unable to arrest Darlington's step up in pace nor could they put the shackles on Sodje who was strong in the air.

Though it did not take a lot of doing, Quakers improved in the second half, creating chances by playing football in their opponents' half.

They were not at their best but good chances still fell to Johnson and Peacock, and it appeared an equaliser was inevitable, even after Ndumbu-Nsungu managed to hit the post from two yards.

But by the 74th minute Quakers looked to have run out of ideas. Shelton Martis, under no pressure at all, demonstrated that not all Dutch players are capable of Total Football when he needlessly blasted the ball downfield to nobody - it was Total something unprintable and sparked another round of boos.

Sixty seconds later, however, Wainwright's bullet header to equalise was as unpredictable in its completion as the remainder of the game as Quakers rifled in three goals in the last 15 minutes.

Wainwright and Dickman also scored in last season's fixture which also finished 3-1, after which Darlington were eighth, just as they are today.

The more things change, the more they stay the same - a proverb which could also be applied to Hodgson's approach to team selection.

Read more about the Quakers here.