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Post by scoffsablue on Sept 3, 2013 11:28:36 GMT 1
Remember them?....used to be just plain old Darlington.....nicknamed the Quakers and played at Feethams Park for most of their existence a ground i visited many times following the Town.....Then some faceless investor comes along and gives them a supposed facelift and builds a new ground for them.... the Darlington Arena.....27,000 capacity suicide....................So where are they now?.....Well last season they were promoted from the Evo-Stik North 2nd Division into the Evo-Stik 1st Division....ground sharing with Bishop Auckland at Heritage Park which is around 12 miles away from the old ground.....AFC Darlington is now owned and run by the supporters with buses running the fans to the home games from Darlington....and getting around 1000 to 1500 a week .....Keep thanking your lucky stars Town fans........and come back AFC Darlington.....All is forgiven. Glad to see someone remembers us, seems like a lifetime since we were in the league now. One or two errors there but not far off. Name is actually Darlington 1883 but we would prefer if you didn't mention the 1883 bit, we are still Darlington FC. The FA wanted to kick us in the nuts one more time and made us change the name. We added the year of our formation in an attempt to stick the V's up at them and their stance that we are a new club. We were placed at the 9th level of football last season which for our location is the Northern League. Or the "Royston Vasey Invitational Clown Challenge" as we have come to know it by. We smashed it with 40 wins from 46 games, not with professionals, but with players taken from that level. Players who missed games because they were at work or at a mates stag do in Las Vegas. Just added a professional style outlook and Martin Gray, our manager got the best out of them. Now we are in the said Evo-Stik First division north (there is no 2nd division), still 4 promotions from the football league. Hoping to go through this one as well but our rise may be too rapid as our temporary home is only graded to Evo-Stik Premier level. Crazy situation in that there is a Premier League standard football ground in Darlo and it was available for £2m, but we didn't have any money and are now faced with finding much more to build a new ground. Local rugby club snapped it up and claim to be able to stomach the running costs with a tenth of the fanbase of ours. Many fans are extremely anti-arena anyway, blaming it for our situation. Certainly was the cause of our first administration, and perhaps then became a magnet for the wrong kind of owners as 2 more administrations almost killed us as chairmen thought they could develop adjoining land and offset football losses. Didn't work and lost ownership of the stadium when a mortgage was left unpaid. We'll keep plugging away but now we are fan owned and run, we have to live within our means and there is always a (un)healthy supply of bank-rolled non-league clubs with football league ambitions that will outspend us and make it difficult to get back. There's always the FA cup. Oh, hang on, they kicked us out of that for 2 years as well. It could have so easily been the same for us...and even tho' our original investor turned out to be a wolf in sheeps clothing we were fortunate enough to have a Town fan with Town at heart and willing to invest a few bob of his hard earned...As of today the future of our club looks as well as it has for the last 10 years or so............We had some good memories up at Darlo so I hope you guys emulate the efforts made by Newport, Halifax and Chester recently and get back to/towards the football league in the near future...All the best
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Post by 3Pipe on Sept 3, 2013 11:47:08 GMT 1
Glad to see someone remembers us, seems like a lifetime since we were in the league now. One or two errors there but not far off. Name is actually Darlington 1883 but we would prefer if you didn't mention the 1883 bit, we are still Darlington FC. The FA wanted to kick us in the nuts one more time and made us change the name. We added the year of our formation in an attempt to stick the V's up at them and their stance that we are a new club. We were placed at the 9th level of football last season which for our location is the Northern League. Or the "Royston Vasey Invitational Clown Challenge" as we have come to know it by. We smashed it with 40 wins from 46 games, not with professionals, but with players taken from that level. Players who missed games because they were at work or at a mates stag do in Las Vegas. Just added a professional style outlook and Martin Gray, our manager got the best out of them. Now we are in the said Evo-Stik First division north (there is no 2nd division), still 4 promotions from the football league. Hoping to go through this one as well but our rise may be too rapid as our temporary home is only graded to Evo-Stik Premier level. Crazy situation in that there is a Premier League standard football ground in Darlo and it was available for £2m, but we didn't have any money and are now faced with finding much more to build a new ground. Local rugby club snapped it up and claim to be able to stomach the running costs with a tenth of the fanbase of ours. Many fans are extremely anti-arena anyway, blaming it for our situation. Certainly was the cause of our first administration, and perhaps then became a magnet for the wrong kind of owners as 2 more administrations almost killed us as chairmen thought they could develop adjoining land and offset football losses. Didn't work and lost ownership of the stadium when a mortgage was left unpaid. We'll keep plugging away but now we are fan owned and run, we have to live within our means and there is always a (un)healthy supply of bank-rolled non-league clubs with football league ambitions that will outspend us and make it difficult to get back. There's always the FA cup. Oh, hang on, they kicked us out of that for 2 years as well. All the best for the future, sincerely.
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Post by MarcHTFC on Sept 3, 2013 12:08:55 GMT 1
I remember when we played Darlo on Boxing day 2003 at the arena, drew 1 apiece, shit game made worse by both teams wearing Black and White kits
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chinaski
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[M0:0]
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Post by chinaski on Sept 3, 2013 13:31:27 GMT 1
Didn't their nutjob ex Chairman, Reynolds once pretend to be Asprilla on a radio show because Asprilla never turned up to the show after Reynolds had said he was signing!?
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Post by scoffsablue on Sept 3, 2013 17:14:12 GMT 1
Didn't their nutjob ex Chairman, Reynolds once pretend to be Asprilla on a radio show because Asprilla never turned up to the show after Reynolds had said he was signing!? He must have been on the juice if he expected them not to Sus-aspirilla
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Post by Christ in Shades (art) on Sept 3, 2013 18:09:28 GMT 1
I remember when we played Darlo on Boxing day 2003 at the arena, drew 1 apiece, shit game made worse by both teams wearing Black and White kits I think we actually won this game 1-0 as opposed to drawing. the only time I ever went to Darlington was for a League Cup tie in about 91, we lost 1-0 and ex Town player David Cork scored for Darlo. We hammered em in the second leg at home 4-0.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2013 19:22:00 GMT 1
Whenever I drive up the A1, as I have done a bit recently, I can't help singing "To Darlo, to Darlo, na na na na etc"
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Post by scoffsablue on Sept 4, 2013 1:23:41 GMT 1
Whenever I drive up the A1, as I have done a bit recently, I can't help singing "To Darlo, to Darlo, na na na na etc" To Bishop Auckland just doesn't have the same ring to it!!!
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darlo
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Post by darlo on Sept 4, 2013 13:04:54 GMT 1
Didn't their nutjob ex Chairman, Reynolds once pretend to be Asprilla on a radio show because Asprilla never turned up to the show after Reynolds had said he was signing!? He met with Asprilla and got him to agree to sign in principle, even paraded him round the pitch before a game with Carlisle. Kidderminster got so excited they included him in our team in their programme the next game even though he'd bolted by then. Nick Hancock made a joke about the situation on "They Think It's All Over": "Faustino Asprilla turned his back on Darlington because he couldn't cope with the time difference between Darlington and his native Columbia. When its 6 o'clock in Bogota, it's 1972 in Darlington". Reynolds did many crazy things including phoning into a radio show while ex-manager Dave Hodgson was being interviewed and the two had a slanging match live on air, not related to Asprilla though. He once published all players wages in the local newspaper after missing out in a play-off final, allegedly bugged an ex-managers house, turned up at the training ground to tell players where they were going wrong, knocking on fans doors at 2am if they disagreed with him, tried to force out club legend Craig Liddle for being too popular with the fans. His wife even accused the players of throwing a game against Torquay at a public fans forum. Oh and of course, built a 25,000 seater stadium for a club with 2,000 fans. Some colourful quotes here: linkRead his treatment of David Preece here: link
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Post by scoffsablue on Sept 4, 2013 18:18:33 GMT 1
Didn't their nutjob ex Chairman, Reynolds once pretend to be Asprilla on a radio show because Asprilla never turned up to the show after Reynolds had said he was signing!? He met with Asprilla and got him to agree to sign in principle, even paraded him round the pitch before a game with Carlisle. Kidderminster got so excited they included him in our team in their programme the next game even though he'd bolted by then. Nick Hancock made a joke about the situation on "They Think It's All Over": "Faustino Asprilla turned his back on Darlington because he couldn't cope with the time difference between Darlington and his native Columbia. When its 6 o'clock in Bogota, it's 1972 in Darlington". Reynolds did many crazy things including phoning into a radio show while ex-manager Dave Hodgson was being interviewed and the two had a slanging match live on air, not related to Asprilla though. He once published all players wages in the local newspaper after missing out in a play-off final, allegedly bugged an ex-managers house, turned up at the training ground to tell players where they were going wrong, knocking on fans doors at 2am if they disagreed with him, tried to force out club legend Craig Liddle for being too popular with the fans. His wife even accused the players of throwing a game against Torquay at a public fans forum. Oh and of course, built a 25,000 seater stadium for a club with 2,000 fans. Some colourful quotes here: linkRead his treatment of David Preece here: linkIncredible stories mate......and we thought we'd had it rough with Ken Davy (Our EX-Chairman) having us over for the past decade......For what it's worth i gave you, Darlo and your plight a mention during last nites supporters association meeting in my presentation to our Chaiman and saviour of our Club and Shares Dean Hoyle (Sir) one day i'm sure.....I used your story for the 1% of negative fans we have that don't realise how lucky we are to have a Chairman that is a true supporter of the club and who also has a few bob and is not afraid to use it (wisely) in support of Huddersfield Town his boyhood Club......I really do hope you get back to the Football League one day....and if you're ever down this way give us a shouit if you fancy taking a Town game in............Don't tell George Reynolds though....I don't want him knocking on our front door !!!
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Post by MarcHTFC on Sept 5, 2013 17:24:28 GMT 1
I remember when we played Darlo on Boxing day 2003 at the arena, drew 1 apiece, shit game made worse by both teams wearing Black and White kits I think we actually won this game 1-0 as opposed to drawing. the only time I ever went to Darlington was for a League Cup tie in about 91, we lost 1-0 and ex Town player David Cork scored for Darlo. We hammered em in the second leg at home 4-0. So we did, my mistake
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Post by thenuggett on Sept 8, 2013 20:07:08 GMT 1
They recently played at Farsley Celtic losing 4-2. Farsley are managed by ex- Town player Neil Parsley . ex players Anthony Lloyd and Matty Young also featured for Farsley in the game.
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grist
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Post by grist on Sept 8, 2013 20:34:10 GMT 1
The Feethams was great New ground killed them (and any atmosphere when they played) The only ground I've ever been to where I've been hit by the match ball. It was comfortably missing me then at the last second someone in front of me put their hand up and deflected it right into my mush. I'm still seeing stars now
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