A towering Steve Evans header from a precise Danny Sonner corner plus a late Michael Proctor strike gave the Red Dragons a thoroughly deserved victory over high-flying Darlington at the Racecourse Ground.
This coupled with Mansfield's late defeat at home to Brentford meant that we actually moved off the bottom of the League Two table and are now back withn touching distance of the other side's immediately above us.
Reds boss Brian Little was pleased with both the outcome and the performance: "Today was very pleasing. It was a very solid performance and I really thought that we deserved to win.
"Gavin pulled one really good save off in the first half and in fairness they had a couple of scrambles. They are good enough to score goals against most people but our defending was really pleasing today.
"Overall, I thought that we were strong and we played reasonably well, we changed the system slightly and it worked for us.
"I am pleased with the result but I am pleased with the performance more than anything else. We are unbeaten in four games now as well so that is pleasing as well.
"We don't want to get too carried away but that was a decent performance.
"They are a good side; we watched them a couple of weeks and we came away thinking 'crickey, which is a good team'. On their day they will anybody a hard time because they are quick, they are mobile, they are strong but I thought that we matched them in every department.
"I would be surprise if Dave [Penney] said that he thought that they should have either won or even drawn, I think that we were the better team today, and to be able to say that is pleasing.
"Against Milton Keynes the other week, it was pretty even but we hung on in there but I felt today's performance was better because we genuinely deserved to win.
"We don't want to go overboard but we've got Neil Roberts, young Neil Taylor, young Spends and Evans at the back, and they have all played their part, but the new players have given us an edge. They're fresher, they are experienced in most cases and they have definitely made us a stronger side.
"When you have done what we have had to do, it is nice to see results coming. One the other side of the coin if you had one what we had done and it hadn't worked then that would soon filter through but up to now it's reasonably pleasing.
"I thought that Mike Williams was one of our top players today, I thought that he was outstanding and played really, really well. That is what Mike is here for; he is an under-21 international, he wants to be in the team and today he staked his claim.
"He is 21, playing in a team where eight out of the sixteen are new faces and I hope that the new people bring the best out of those who have been here for a while but he played terrifically well today.
"In the situation we are in, it is about winning games and the performances are secondary in many respects. We got a lot of things right today and this is probably the first time that I have been able to say that.
"At Bury, we had to battle hard and we deserved to win, but I thought that today was probably our strongest performance since I have been here.
"I also thought that we looked stronger today, we just tweaked it a little bit. We felt that now that we have got Drewe here or even big Rob [Duffy], who I think has got something to offer us, we have got a big man now and we can't isolate him so we played people up either side of him.
"We pushed Chris up a bit further than he has been playing in recent weeks, Stuart on the right-hand side, or Proc when he came on, so we had a couple of players who could support the big man.
"No disrespect, but it is no good having a big man and expecting him to run everywhere. You have got to hit the channels and play off him so the fact that we changed it slightly today helped the team and helped Drewe.
"Steve is capable of scoring goals and even in my short time here has got on a couple of headers that might have ended up in the back of the net, as he's powerful. Perhaps his more important headers were late on in our own box, but it was a great goal."
