FANS of crisis-hit Darlington Football Club are planning for the future, should the Quakers go out of business.

Supporters have already started to discuss plans should the worst happen and the 125-year-old club be forced out of the Football League.

The club’s former chairman, George Houghton, filed for administration in February, leaving it without an official owner.

Manager Dave Penney has left for Oldham Athletic, ten staff lost their jobs on Wednesday and the players are able to listen to offers from other clubs.

The only bid for the club was rejected as unworkable when a second deadline for offers was reached last week.

Dave Clark, from administrator Brackenbury Clark and Co, said he would be unable to justify to the Football League that he had a plan to take the club from administration, something needed for it to remain in the league.

Several ideas are being discussed should the death knell be sounded, depending on several factors.

One suggestion is the team leaving The Northern Echo Darlington Arena to share at another ground in the region.

Among those pooling ideas is the club’s Supporters’ Trust. Spokesman Tony Taylor said, however, that the trust still hoped the club could be saved.

He said: “The trust is entirely 100 per cent committed to saving Darlington Football Club as best as we can. The follow-on from that is saving football in Darlington. We want Darlington Football Club to be saved in its present form in the Football League.

“I understand the enthusiasm of fans looking at an alternative.

We have contingency plans in place – we would be stupid not to do – but I hope it is not that outcome.

“I have been supporting Darlington Football Club since 1965 and I would be gutted, as would a lot of fans, if we lost it.”

With little interest from would-be investors, the most likely person to preserve the club would appear to be Mr Houghton. “I want to save that club,” he said, while not confirming if he would return as chairman if it meant saving the club. “I have spent three years of my life with it.

“I am trying to put financial packages together, but it is very hard to get people to put money in.”