ROB PURDIE collected Darlington’s Player of the Year accolade on Saturday and then thanked Quakers’ fans for their support during a traumatic period. Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Brentford means Darlington can finish the campaign no higher than 12th, but results have not always been at the top of the agenda in recent weeks.

Understandably so too as since the club went into administration in February the squad have been paid only a third of their wages and a question marks hangs over Quakers’ future.

“The fans have kept coming these last few weeks and really helped us through it,” said Purdie. “Hopefully they can see that we tried as hard as we can this season to make this year successful.

“Some of the younger lads are really struggling. We’re going for a few drinks tonight but some of the lads can’t afford to come which is a horrible situation really.

“On a day-to-day basis it’s OK, but when you sit down and talk about the situation and get told we’re not getting paid again this month it’s not very nice.

“We were supposed to be paid a few weeks ago but it still hasn’t gone in the bank.

“You can put a brave face on it but the truth is that it hurts.

We’re not getting paid but you’ve still got to go out there and work as hard as you can and all the boys have done that, they’ve put their all in.

“It would have been easy to sulk and not care, which for maybe a couple of games after we first went into administration we might have done, but then we kicked on and it’s nice to see it’s been appreciated by the fans.”

Purdie was named Player of the Year by supporters and he also received the Darlo Uncovered website’s top honour with Alan White collecting the Away Player of the Year title. Darlington were deducted ten points for going into administration, a situation that the squad feel bitter about.

Purdie added: “Five months of really hard work has all been taken away from us. We were hoping to go one better than last season and if we hadn’t gone into administration we would have done.

“Altogether it’s been 18 months of hard graft. Obviously us players have got to take a bit of responsibility for the results that have not gone our way in recent months.

“But the bigger picture is that we’ve been very hard done by.”