It may be one of the oldest and overused clichés in football, but Gary Brown has no problem with taking Darlington’s promising season one game at a time.

Their position at the top of the table appears healthy, with Quakers level on points with Northwich Victoria and Salford City, but in possession of three games in hand on each of their rivals as well as a vastly superior goal difference.

That is partly due to Darlington’s solid defence, where Brown is first-choice right-back, which has conceded only 13 goals in 22 league games.

With only just over half the campaign played however, Brown is looking no further than this weekend’s visit to Padiham, while focus on matches with Northwich Victoria and Salford can wait for another day.

Quakers’ captain said: “We can’t get carried away. Last year we were in a good position after a good run and I think we got complacent, and that’s why I think we fell short at the end. Curzon looked like they won the league at a canter.

“If we do things right and only look at it one game at a time, people will be looking at us in May in the same way they looked at Curzon.

“It’s a cliché about taking it one game at a time, but that’s how we won the Northern League.

“Me and Tony Norman [former goalkeeping coach] would talk about it all the time, and in the end we were down to 45 minutes at a time.

“It does work. A lot of teams will go into a match thinking about what’s to come before they’ve even got their next game out of the way first.”

At the end of the month Quakers travel to Salford, a club that has made major changes this week in a bid to bolster their promotion push, appointing former Ramsbottom United joint-managers Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley.

The duo have wasted little time in raiding their former club for four players as well as a coach, setting up an intriguing competition for the single automatic promotion slot.

But bottom-of-the-table Padiham this weekend is Quakers’ immediate focus, and Brown is aware that Darlington need to improve on last Saturday’s display against Brighouse Town.

Darlington won 2-0, with Brown scoring the first goal, but only after overcoming a poor first half display.

“It happens at this level,” said Brown, who played his first match after serving a three-game ban. “You’re not training everyday and we’ve not played much because of postponements and the farce at Kendal, so below-par performances can creep in.

“It only takes four or five of us playing badly it and it can look like all 11 are struggling. I wasn’t happy with myself at all.

“I struggled big time for the first 30-35 minutes. I was surprised to stay on the pitch at half-time. I wasn’t singled out myself at half-time, I’m probably being harsh on myself, but I was extremely poor in the first half hour and collectively we weren’t anything like we have been.

“But we’ve got a good spine to the team, Pete, Hunter, Whitey, Leon and Tom and then Army and Dowson up front. You can put whatever you like beside those players.”