Martin Gray is in cautious mood ahead of today’s game at Heritage Park with Padiham, warning his Darlington side not to be complacent against the bottom-of-the-table team.

Quakers have risen to joint-second having defeated Ossett Town last weekend and before scoring seven goals in midweek to overcome Harrogate RA.

Gray, however, is aware that it’s not long since the team went six matches without a win, while Harrogate having to call on their veteran assistant manager to play in goal as an emergency was a factor on Wednesday.

“The message is not to get carried away,” said the manager. “All we’ve done is win two games and scored a few goals, but the performances could be better.

“You can’t get carried away on that performance on Wednesday. We need to be better and we need to be consistent.

“We won convincingly and we improved the goal difference, but we’ve got to get ourselves back to reality on Saturday when we need to go out and be dominant again.

“We always ask for clean sheets, that’s the way we are, and we can be better than that.”

Gray was, though, full of praise for Amar Purewal, who has made a goalscoring return to action following a spell on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.

His return has coincided with an upturn in results, the striker netted in the win at Ossett as well as claiming his first Darlington hat-trick in midweek, the treble taking him to 50 goals in Quakers colours in 90 appearances The manager made Purewal one of his first signings in the summer of 2012, bringing him in from Durham City, and Gray said: “He’s got lots of goals for us, but that’s his first hat-trick and I’m delighted for the kid.

“He’s honest, he’s hard-working and he buys into exactly what I want from the team regarding work ethic. He got his rewards on Wednesday.

“It’s a prolific record, to get that amount of goals and it shows you how well he’s done for the club since he’s been here.

“It’s always good for the forwards to get a third goal. It was the same with Liam Hatch, I would’ve liked him to get a hat-trick because it’s a big thing for any player.”

Among the scorers was Stephen Thompson, last season’s player of the year who has this campaign taken until his 11th appearance to get on the scoresheet.

It was a typical Thompson goal too, blasted from 25 yards beyond the despairing dive of stand-in keeper Lee Ashforth.

“We’ve said for a while that he’s needed a goal,” said Gray. “He needed an assist or a goal, one to go in off someone’s backside, and then he goes and pulls that one out.

“He’s scored goals that a number of times for us and hopefully that will give him a kick-start and belief that when he’s in that position he can pull the trigger because he’s capable of scoring goals like that.”

Somewhat inevitably, Purewal took the man of the match honours, though Gray was most impressed with Tom Portas, whose drive in midfield has made him consistently the team’s best player so far this season.

“The performance of the night was Tom Portas,” said Gray, who brought him to the club from Whitby. “His energy, his use of the ball, his tackling, he gave you everything you want from a midfield player.

“Even at 7-1 up he was still making forward runs and he was getting back to help in defence. He was outstanding.”

With no new injury worries in his squad, Gray is highly likely to stick with the same starting XI with David Dowson a possibility to be named on the bench. He is edging closer to returning from a hamstring problem, while Terry Galbraith has a broken toe.

Padiham recently signed Brett Omerod, the former Leeds United and Southampton striker.

Now 37, he made his name at Blackpool for whom he scored at Feethams on the final day of the 2000-01 season, when the Tangerines won promotion in front of a sizeable number of travelling fans.

His new club have lost eight of their ten league matches, conceding 29 goals.