“IT'S Saturday afternoon,” said David Frost 50 years ago with immense gravity, large sideburns creeping down the side of his face. “It's big match afternoon. Here in Darlington. Here at Feethams.”
The camera panned away to show he was wearing a long brown suede jacket with enormous cuffs and collars, and behind him was an empty, windswept terrace.
“The crowd is estimated at a little over a thousand compared to the average at Manchester United of 50,000,” he said. “They are fighting for survival. We'll find out what happens…”
During snowy the snowy February of 1973, the legendary broadcaster spent a week with Darlington Football Club recording an episode of The Frost Programme for ITV. In his introduction, he explained in his portentous style: “We all hear a great deal about cup finalists and who's going to win the First Division, but what about the story of the 92nd team in the football league?
"It's a different type of story. The story of a team fighting for survival and keeping up morale while they are doing it.
"It isn't just a football story, it's a people story: the people of the club, the people who play for the club, the people who support the club and, indeed, the people who don't support the club."
Frost was right. It was more than a football story. It was an insight into a town's heart-aching relationship with its football club, and a reminder of the ridiculous resilience of optimism.
Frost found the Quakers bottom of the Fourth Division on the brink of financial collapse. The chairman, a self-made millionaire, was deeply unpopular, and attendances plummeting.
Over footage of a meeting of the Darlington Supporters' Club, chaired by supermarket owner Ken Warne, Frost said with his trademark deadpan delivery: "Unfortunately, the fully paid up membership of the supporters' club is eight, which means they are outnumbered two to one by the number of players."
His week in Darlo began at the crack of dawn on Saturday, February 10, as the bleary-eyed players loaded themselves onto a bus outside the twin towers of Feethams. They were off to Chester in search of their first away win for nearly four months.
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On the journey, the coach was overtaken by a gold Vauxhall Viva, black-and-white scarves trailing out of its windows. It contained the full contingent of Darlington's travelling fans – "an optimistic trio", said Frost.
At Chester, the Quakers played in blood red shirts and the tackles were blood-curdling.
"Five-nil," said Frost as the final goal went in. "An outcome more disappointing than the worst fears Darlington might have had."
After training, he went to Newton Aycliffe, where four of the players – Don Burluraux, Steve Holbrook, Colin Sinclair and goalkeeper Ernie Adams – lived. Sprouting 1970s hair, ear-picker collars and wildly-coloured floral shirts, the foursome looked like an audition for a Slade tribute band.
They told him of the difficulties of playing in front of Feethams' small crowds.
"It's depressing, " said Burluraux, glass in hand, "wag" by his side. "They all come in second half when they can get in for nothing. The crowd doubles when you kick off in the second half."
Burluraux was the star of the show with a David Essex twinkle in his eye. Despite his exotic name, he came from Skelton in Cleveland. He played five games for Middlesbrough before his ankle was shattered in a tackle. He lasted three years at Darlington – 13 goals in 112 games – until, aged 24, he was forced to retire through injury. In that troubled 1972-73 campaign, he was the Quakers' Player of the Season.
Frost also talked to two veteran Quakers – Bill Hooper, from a local family of footballing legends, and Davy Brown, a prolific scorer from the 1920s – and to apprentice goalkeeper Phil Owers, who he described as "17 and nursing a dream".
Owers had leaked seven goals on his debut a few weeks earlier. With his mother alongside him on a leather sofa, her hair rigidly permed above her forehead, the Shildon youngster said: "I want to get Darlington out of trouble and I would like to play at Wembley for a big club." (He went on to play 114 times for the Quakers, turned out for Gillingham and Hartlepool and then played in the Northern League.)
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Frost filmed the players picking up their weekly brown paper pay packets.
"There are often headlines about the wages of a Pele or a George Best, but at Darlington it is a somewhat different story," he said, and one of the players’ partners revealed how she supplemented the family income by working as a garage receptionist.
Frost was allowed access to the smoke-filled boardroom, where the directors were old men with thick, horn-rimmed glasses, who sucked on cigarettes and pipes. Chairman George Tait was "a self-made millionaire" carpet dealer from Newcastle, who had taken over from auctioneer Harry Robinson in 1970, pledging to invest £75,000.
Three years after visiting Darlington, Frost famously badgered disgraced former US president Richard Nixon into admitting that he had let his nation down over the Watergate scandal, but the purple bow-tied Darlington chairman was a much harder nut to crack. No matter how many times Frost pressed him, Tait wouldn't reveal how much of his personal fortune he had sunk into the club.
"Just say it's cost me a bit of money," was all the chairman would say.
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Then Frost tackled him on why he'd had five managers in the past year.
The first two, said Tait, were Len Richley and Ken Hale and both were caretakers. Then came Frank Brennan on trial, "and he left of his own free will" after three months. Tait couldn't remember the name of the fourth (it was Allan Jones), but he'd sacked him after "a very bad start" to the season.
Referring to his fifth, Tait said: "If it is possible for Darlington to be successful, I think Mr Brand will do it."
Ralph Brand, wearing an orange shirt and purple tie, was a grimly determined former Scottish international who played for Rangers, Manchester City and Sunderland.
Although Darlington was his first managerial job, he was already fluent in managerspeak. "There are 15 games left, " he said. "If we win them all, we will be dry."
Then the intrepid reporter visited the ASE working men's club in Northgate where the ashtrays were piled high with smoked-out dog-ends and the 200 punters were downing foaming pints of warm ale. Only three of them said they were going to see the Quakers' next match, and one of those was "totally blind" – Frost wasn't cruel enough to labour the point.
But when Frost asked the ASE audience if, despite their negativity about the club, they would be sad to see the Quakers go out of business, there was a resounding and warming yes in reply.
Then Saturday came.
"Whether you are chairman, manager or apprentice, it's matchday," said the presenter.
Chairman Tate drove to Feethams in his Jaguar from his Gosforth mansion; manager Brand walked from his rented terraced digs; apprentice Owers stood on the snowy street outside the Surtees Arms in Shildon waiting for the bright red No 1 United bus.
Cambridge United were the visitors. "I thoroughly believe we can win," said Brand.
The players ran out to a slow version of the Match of the Day theme tune playing over a tinny tannoy from a scratchy vinyl record. Frost, in his heavy suede jacket, patrolled the windswept terraces, worrying at their emptiness.
But within a few minutes of kick-off, Burluraux burst through the Cambridge defence and opened the scoring. The optimistic noise of rasping rattles filled the Tin Shed.
Colin Sinclair should have won a penalty when his superb jinky run was cruelly terminated but then left half Norman Lees fired in a brilliant second. Quakers were on the up!
"But alas," said Frost, puncturing the moment, "by halftime, they had given away three soft goals and the score had a familiar ring to it, Darlington losing 3-2."
In the second half, with a large hoarding behind them saying "Fly North East, Fly Teesside Airport", the Quakers pressed valiantly, and Ian Hopkinson eventually equalised. Great joy filled the emptiness of the terraces.
"That's how it finished," said Frost. "Three each."
"Football is a game of mistakes," said manager Brand profoundly. "Unfortunately our mistakes were in front of goal and the other side cashed in. But the encouraging thing was the lads were not disheartened.
"They pressed all the time in the second half and I thought we had a good chance of getting the two points. "The lads played well."
Then Frost's jangly closing theme music began, an optimistic note – a late equaliser, a point gained, applause from enthusiastic supporters at the hope that the season had been turned around – on which to end the hour-long documentary.
But of the remaining 16 matches, the Quakers won just one, and when the season ended they were still in 92nd place at the foot of the Football League, facing the ignominy of applying for re-election.
Manager Brand was sacked and chairman Tait departed, but Darlo were re-elected, and so 50 years ago, the new season began with new hope that somehow things would be different…
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