CONCEDING a goal in injury time meant Darlington left Tamworth feeling as though they had lost, though Aaron Brown was keen to emphasise the positives.

Quakers are now unbeaten in five and have a chance to move up the table this week with two games at The Northern Echo Arena.

Tomorrow they play Mansfield Town, captained by former Darlington skipper Steve Foster, and host Kettering Town on Saturday.

“It’s disappointing to concede a goal in the last few minutes of the game, it feels like a defeat,” Brown admitted.

“It was a difficult match but the lads rolled their sleeves up and gave it a go.

“We had a player sent off, so it was backs to the wall defending for the last 20 to 25 minutes. They were getting the ball wide to try to get crosses in and unfortunately they had a cross which took a deflection and went through a leg or two before their player popped up to score.

“We’re noticing that the fans are more behind us now than they were before.

They’re seeing that we’re playing a lot better now than we were at the beginning of the season and it feels like we are building momentum.

Hopefully, we can push on now against Mansfield.”

Quakers will be without Tommy Wright for three matches after his red card on Saturday, unless Quakers win an appeal against referee Darren Bond’s decision.

He became Darlington’s second player to be red-carded this season following Brown’s dismissal at home to Crawley in November.

That sending-off remains one of the few bleak spots for the 30-year-old left-back, whose season has improved week by week.

“Today wasn’t my best game but on the whole I’m happy with how things are going,” he said.

“I got off to difficult start when I joined. Sometimes when you join a new club it takes a little while to settle in. That happened to me and I had to build up my fitness but I’m up to full fitness now and delighted to be here.

“Stability is the way forward.

We don’t want to be chopping and changing the defence too much because that’s the strongest part of the team.

“If we can keep keeping clean sheets, or not conceding too many, we’ll win more games than we lose.

“I didn’t manage to get an assist today but more important to me is keeping a clean sheet. We didn’t manage that today but I’m happy that we’re still unbeaten in a little while.”