BULLISH Darlington player-coach Craig Lee declared 'it's still all to play for' as he set his sights on reeling in the top two in National Division Three.

The Blackwell Meadows side are fifth in the table after Saturday's 36-5 victory over basement dwellers Kendal.

Frontrunners Nuneaton and Bradford and Bingley are 13 and 12 points ahead of Darlington respectively, and with two teams going up, if the league is expanded, the County Durham side have their work cut out.

But Lee is not even thinking of picking up the towel, never mind throwing it in the ring.

"I don't think anything is impossible," he said. "We go away next week to New Brighton and we have got to look to that as a five-pointer as they are second from bottom.

"Then we have Nuneaton at home, Bradford to play at home, Blaydon to play at home, Preston to play at home. We have got the four teams above us all to play at home and we fancy our chances against anyone on our pitch."

On Saturday, Darlington welcomed back a number of their players from injury and with others to come back into the frame in the next few weeks, there is a positive mood in the camp.

"If we can get some good training sessions in, anything can happen," Lee said. "We didn't do ourselves justice at Bradford and at Blaydon (41-10 and 52-22 defeats) and at Nuneaton, so we have got scores to settle there and there is no reason why we cannot upset the form book and turn these teams over."

Darlington have Cleckheaton, Tynedale and Darlington Mowden Park away from home and Lee says these are must-win games.

"They are three games that we have got to target to win," he said. "So if out of those eight games we target seven of them then we will have done very well."

Saturday's game was a largely lacklustre affair. One of the few bright moments came with the introduction of Apenai Korurua, whose running caused the Cumbrian side problems.

However, a combination of poor passing and bad kicking meant his good work was often undone before any damage could be caused.

In fact, Darlington found themselves on the back foot when Kendal took a surprise lead in only the second minute.

"We got off to a bad start, conceding the try early on," Lee said. "But to be fair, that gave us the kick up the backside that we required.

"From then on we controlled the game without putting any pressure on ourselves. We had 85 per cent of possession and controlled the scrums and the lineouts, the only problem was that we were trying to force things and put wasteful passes in. If our passing had to be hand I am sure we would have scored a few more tries."

A Phil Dawson try converted by Lee Davis, and scores from Richard Snowball and Del Lewis put Darlington 17-5 up at the break.

Further scores then came from David Andrew and Simon Crozier before Lee was sin-binned for a foul on Nathan Woolf as he attempted to kick ahead.

However, Kendal, even with the man advantage, were unable to cut the deficit and a Howe try and Davis conversion put the seal on the victory.

Mowden Park went down 38-10 to Bradford and Bingley in Yorkshire, Gareth Forman and Tim Visser scoring unconverted tries.

Blaydon won 21-19 at Cleckheaton with Martin Shaw and Richard Windle scoring tries and the latter kicking the goals.

Tynedale emerged victorious from a scrappy fixture with Fylde, 16-8.

Gavin Beasley notched a penalty after Fylde had gone ahead thanks to an unconverted try.

The sides were level at 8-8 at the break thanks to a score from Ed Holmes.

Beasley missed a penalty shortly after the restart before making amends with another eight minutes in and Holmes wrapped up the points with two minutes left.

Durham City ran out convincing 49-13 winners against Sandal in Powergen North Two East.

After coasting into an 11-0 lead in the opening exchanges, Durham let their guard down and allowed their opponents back into the match,

However, a second half blitz confirmed Durham's superiority. Scores came from Bieliauskas (two), Stevenson, Stanley, Rubie, Wearmouth and Cammiss. Walker scored two penalties and four conversions.

Sunderland went out of the Powergen Junior Vase at the weekend against Shropshire outfit Cleobury Mortimer. The last-16 tie finished 17-12 to the home side.

"The team are desperately disappointed at the result," said Sunderland chairman Andy Kyle.

"We have talked about the match and it would be easy to lay the blame on a pitch which one referees society linesman acknowledged after the game was probably unplayable.

"We know we did not perform in the way we can and it was no consolation having Cleoburys committee and East Midlands RFU committee members approach you after the game saying that we were clearly the better rugby playing side.

"All of this does not detract from the fact that Cleobury mastered the conditions better than us and we should have been able to adjust and on the day's performance they deserved to win."