Penney learns Joachim's ruled out via the internet!

If Darlington's game with Boston United gets the go-ahead today, a clause in Julian Joachim's contract prevents him from playing against his former club.

Darlo Manager Dave Penney admitted he only learned of his star striker's unavailability through the internet this week.

These type of clauses are quite common in football and at Darlington.

When Ricky Ravenhill joined Darlington from Grimsby in January, Penney promised not to play him when the teams met four days later. Although the manager admits that such a clause, six months after the transfer, is very unusual.

Joachim moved to Quakers from York Street in August for a club record transfer fee and since recovering from a hamstring strain the 32-year-old has been a regular in Penney's side until being rested on Tuesday.

JJ was on the bench for the win at Bristol Rovers with a view to being back in the starting line-up today, until Penney went on-line and discovered his star striker was unable to feature.

Penney told the Northern Echo: "I only found out this week, on Wednesday I think, that he couldn't play. Obviously it was done and dusted before I arrived at the club and it's just one of those things that happens when players move clubs.

It's a little bit long down the line to insert a clause like that. There's nothing we can do about it, it's done.

The only reason I found out about it was because I went on Boston's website, then I made enquiries here and found out it was true. If the clause is in you've got to adhere to it.

I go on the BBC website because they've always got information on other clubs, things like injuries and suspensions. It came up, Tim Ryan is available but Julian Joachim isn't, and I thought 'hang on a minute, we might have a problem here'.

I said to Grimsby when we signed Ricky that I wouldn't put him in the team when we played them on the Saturday because they probably wouldn't have let the deal go through otherwise.

We were going to do the same thing when we thought Simon Johnson was moving to Wycombe because it's Sod's law he would've come back and scored a goal. But our game with Wycombe is a little bit closer than the three or four months since Julian signed.

I left him out at Bristol to give him a little bit of a rest because he had played 90 minutes at Macclesfield. It's one of those things."