Salford City visit the North-East tomorrow when they face Darlington at Heritage Park. In an exclusive interview, Ray Simpson spoke to Gary Neville, one of Manchester United’s Class of ’92 who are backing the Evo-Stik First Division club.

Darlington are enduring a rough patch of form and tomorrow face their toughest test of the season so far when they come up against league leaders Salford City, the club that made headlines in the summer when they were bought by five members of the Class of ’92.

Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs have ambitious plans to take the club through the leagues and everything is going to plan so far, having won five of their six games.

That’s in contrast to Quakers, who were many bookmakers’ second favourites for promotion. They have won two and drawn two of their five matches, though remain waiting for league officials to make a decision on the abandoned first game of the season with Warrington.

Salford have drawn once, a fortnight ago 0-0 at Spennymoor Town, which is the only game that at least one of the famous five has not attended.

Gary Neville has hinted that he could be at Heritage Park tomorrow, a match that will see injury-hit Quakers attempt to win for only the second time in seven matches, though the former England right-back cites the clash with Quakers as being a yardstick to gauge how far Salford have progressed.

Furthermore, not only do Neville and Co want success on the pitch, they are keen to make progress off it too.

“We see our game against Darlington as a big test to see how far we’ve come as a club,” said Neville, who has perhaps the highest public profile of the quintet due to his national newspaper column and work on Sky Sports as well as assisting England manager Roy Hodgson.

“There’s going to be a big crowd, probably the biggest that we’ll play in front of this season. We see Darlington as one of our main competitors for promotion, and we’ll get a measure of where we stand.

“I know about what’s happened to Darlington in the past, and everyone must have been devastated about being relegated so far down the pyramid. But everyone seems to be working hard up there. Out of bad, can come good.

“Darlington are a great example of the league we’re in. We believe that we can learn a lot from how other clubs do things. For example, we’d like to find out how Darlington engage with their fans and the local community. We want Salford to become a real community club.

“This whole thing isn’t a publicity stunt, we don’t do stunts. As far as we’re concerned, we’re in this for the long term. We have plans for where we want to be in five, ten and fifteen years. We want to establish a football club that has a responsibility towards it fans, local business and the city that it’s based in.”

Salford finished 12th last season, ten places behind Darlington, since when the former Red Devils team-mates have become involved in running a club that they all have links with.

Despite enjoying lengthy playing careers at the top of the game, they have been learning the art of running a football club.

Neville added: “Ryan Giggs and I wanted something to get our teeth into it now that we’ve finished playing, we wanted to do something with ourselves outside of the jobs that we’re doing now. All of us finished playing around the age of 35, unless you’re called Ryan Giggs.

“Giggsy lives in Salford, Paul Scholes was born there, and the other three of us were brought up nearby in Bury.

“We approached Salford earlier this year, and assured them that we were serious about wanting to be involved and what future plans we had for the club. When we explained all that, they were happy for it all to happen.

“It’s an incredible feeling to be involved. Personally I didn’t realise that so much went on with running a club. It’s really hard work.

“Recently, for example, we’ve been looking at extending the bar, and what we need to do to achieve that. My brother Phil, regularly meets with the manager and coaches to talk about players and tactics, and the other lads also get involved when their time allows. They go to games as well, we try to get to as many as we can when our other commitments allow.

“Since we started at the end of last season, we’ve been to lots of matches that the team has been involved in, and that includes friendlies. We’ve hardly missed a game, the only one any of us has missed has been Spennymoor.

“Whether we win, lose or draw, we understand that it’s football. However, we want Salford to play in the right competitive spirit, where each player gives his absolute all in every single match.”

* To read the full interview with Gary Neville, see Darlington’s programme tomorrow, £2.50.