Gary Brown will be at centre-back when Darlington travel to Harrogate RA today and the captain happily admits to preferring the position, where he has returned to recently.

It is where he put in a solid performance for the midweek win at Padiham, following up last weekend’s victory over Ossett Town, against whom Brown scored twice.

His brace coincided with Darlington’s 14th clean sheet of the term – five more required to match last season’s tally – during which Quakers’ captain has been used as unorthodox right-back with Alan White and Chris Hunter the first-choice partnership in the centre.

But White misses out today due to suspension, so Brown will partner Hunter who was unavailable last Saturday due to being married 24 hours previously and was then rested at Padiham. New recruit Adam Cartright, who joined yesterday on loan from Sunderland, will be at right-back.

“I was happy to be back in the centre, albeit by default. I’ve had that all my career, managers look at my versatility, but I am a centre-back,” said Brown, who missed most of last season due to injury.

“Hunter and Whitey have got a brilliant partnership, which can’t be budged, so I’ve just got to do what I can.

“This season I’ve been able to enjoy my hobby, which is playing football. It was heart-breaking last season, working during the week and then not being able to do what I wanted at a weekend.”

Back-to-back wins have returned Darlington to the top of the table, enabling defeat at fellow promotion-chasers Salford City a fortnight ago to be quickly forgotten, though Brown believes that loss could work in Darlington’s favour.

He said: “Hopefully other teams will have seen that result and now think we are vulnerable. It might give them more confidence when they play us, rather than them thinking it’s their cup final.

“They see our crowds, the way the club is ran, the amount of press we get, and they look forward to playing us.

“It’s their big game for the season, but they also thought we were unbeatable. With Salford beating us, they might relax a little bit and that can only work in our favour.”

Last Saturday Darlington overcame Ossett 5-0, and Brown added: “It was important to make a statement and I think we did that. From front to back, I think we made them look really average.

“I prefer a clean sheet to scoring goals, I’ll leave the goalscoring to the other lads.

“We’ve always known, even before the Salford game, that they were going to drop points before the end of the season and so will we. We just have to make sure that losing to Salford was the day that we dropped points and now go on another run.

“If we can go on another streak there’s no reason we can’t have things wrapped up before the end of the season, but we’ve got to stay focused on what we’re doing.”