After the third and fourth goals, blue flares were thrown on to the pitch, which meant that they had to be removed before play could restart. As a club, we are treating these incidents very seriously.

This behaviour is in contravention of the “Club responsibility of Fans” notices which are displayed on the official Darlington FC website before every home and away game – a notice was published before the Harrogate game on our website on Thursday 27th October --  in which it is specifically said that “DFC is proud of its community and family based support and cannot, and will not, tolerate inappropriate behaviour or crowd disturbance of any kind.” The club has also in our home match programmes, warned about carrying pyrotechnics into grounds. We have also posted warning notices outside our home ground.

If you have any information, or know who is responsible for these incidents at Harrogate, then please contact the club.

If any individual (s) can be clearly named and identified, then the club will fully support the police in their investigations, and the club will ban the person (s) responsible from our home matches for life.

The police, who were at the game, believe they can identify one individual, but they need further help from Darlington supporters. They believe that another two individuals were involved in the incidents.

The club will treat all information regarding these incidents in confidence. Please e mail dave.watson@darlingtonfc.org if you have any information.

Update -- two fans have already come forward with valuable information which we are passing on to the police. Were you standing in the away stand near the end that Quakers were attacking in each half? If you have any information, then please e mail dave.watson@darlingtonfc.org in confidence.