DARLINGTON continue to be frustrated in their wait to select Nathan Fisher, who took the matter into his own hands in early hours of yesterday morning.

The striker is annoyed with the delay over international clearance arriving from Thailand, which means he has been unable to play despite signing almost a month ago.

Quakers have played six fixtures since he signed.

The last two games have seen the team miss a glut of chances and manager Martin Gray would like to have been able to give the former Gateshead forward a run-out while his team lost 1-0 to Curzon Ashton on Monday.

Instead, Fisher sat frustrated in the stand and a few hours after arriving home from the match he attempted to resolve the situation by calling his former club in Thailand.

The situation is in contrast to when he moved abroad during the summer after leaving Gateshead, when the English FA quickly gave him clearance to play abroad.

He said: “I was up at 4am, because of the time difference, ringing Thailand but they just gave me an email address, there’s nothing really more I can do.

“The FA are waiting for the Thai FA to send a document. I only waited a couple of days when I went to play in Thailand, the English FA did it straight away.”

Fisher is hopeful of receiving clearance for Saturday’s FA Trophy tie at Buxton, particularly as Amar Purewal limped out on Monday’s game with a groin strain.

Gray said: “I’m hoping this week something will happen.

We made the signing three weeks ago, it’ll be four weeks this Monday.

“Technology is great these days, you can speak to a man on the moon, but why can’t we receive an email from the other side of the world?”

As well as being annoyed by Thailand’s football authorities, Gray was frustrated with referee Gavin Hock during Monday’s game.

He was stunned at some of the challenges that the Wakefield official allowed Curzon to make, particularly right-back Simon Woodford who early on twice scythed down Stephen Thompson without receiving a caution.

Gray, who made his feelings clear to Hock at fulltime, said: “I thought it was the worst referee we’ve seen this season. We didn’t get any protection.

“After one minute Stephen Thompson was smashed by the right-back and the same player did him again on the edge of the 18-yard box.

Obviously Tommo is a marked man so they’ve done their homework.

“Then Leon Scott made a bad challenge which was a booking, I agree with that, but then there were three or four more wild challenges when the referee didn’t take any action.

“I’ll live with them kicking us, I’m up for that all day, but what’s supposed to happen is that the referee should do his job.

“It took him an hour into the game to book one of their players, and after that there were some real bad challenges.

“I was really disappointed with him, he just didn’t do his job and protect the players.”