As lowly Darlington lurched from one crisis to the next last season, David Hodgson stunned football by answering Goerge Reynolds' SOS to take the hot-seat for a third time. Reporter Stuart Mackintosh looks at the story behind that extraordinary decision and the turbulent period that followed.

WORSHIPPED by the Darlington faithful as the idol who once steered the unfashionable outfit all the way to Wembley, not to mention rescuing the ailing club from the brink of disaster last season, David Hodgson is not a man many would dare call stupid.

But when his young daughter, Brogan, told her dad in no uncertain terms that he would be daft not to return for a third spell at the Quakers' helm, Hodgson sat up and took notice.

The story began last October, when the club was in dire straits. The inaugural season at the £20m Reynolds Arena was hardly going according to plan.

The fans were in open revolt and the team, under Mick Tait, certainly not playing the kind of football one would expect to grace a home fit for the Premiership.

Hodgson, though, had other things on his mind, namely tying up a deal with chairman George Reynolds to purchase the old Feethams East Stand, with an eye to transforming it into a state-of-the-art sporting complex.

During their negotiations, Reynolds had mentioned in passing the prospect of Hodgson returning but the idea never progressed.

The former boss, who had walked out on the Quakers in 1995 and 2000, was adamant that Tait should be made fully aware of the whole picture. But, after Darlington crashed to a 3-1 home defeat against Bury, Reynolds was on the phone to make his move.

"It was George at his persuasive best," Hodgson says in his new biography, Three Times a Quaker.

"He said he didn't know if he wanted to sell me the stand at Feethams. I pointed out that we had put together a deal and shaken hands on it.

"He asked me what I wanted it for and I replied that he knew, because I had already told him.

"He said: 'But what do you want it for if you are coming back into football?' I said that I wasn't going back into football.

"At that point he said that he wanted me to return as manager. I said no, so he said that he would not sell me the stand. I told him that I wouldn't discuss it further until he told Mick.

"Then he said: 'So you do want to come back'. It was more of a statement than a question.

"By then my daughter Brogan had turned the speaker on and was listening in. 'I'll make him come back', she said. George heard what she said.

"She added: 'You love the club and if you don't go back, you're stupid daddy. You tell me about it every time we go past Feethams.'

"Children see things in black and white. While adults argue and try to make a point, children's minds are not cluttered like that. They say it as it is."

The wheels were set in motion, the pair agreeing that Reynolds would either stay away from matches or at least remain behind the scenes. Despite their well-documented differences, the pair were reunited for an awkward media photo-call confirming the appointment.

Hodgson says: "Suddenly I was shoulder to shoulder with George again. That was hard for me and it must have been hard for him too, because he had spent the previous three years hammering me. I guess I had not been too full of praise for him either. Perhaps he knew how much the club meant to me. George admires loyalty and knows I am loyal to the club.

"It was hard to have my photo taken with him when I returned. We held aloft the Darlo scarf, but there was a tension between us because we were not quite as close as the smiling picture made us look.

"There was more than a little hypocrisy about the whole thing. That's why we didn't have a Press conference."

After the club collapsed into administration with enormous debts, administrator David Field came to Hodgson to tell him the outlook was grim. The manager responded by arranging a celebrity fund-raising match that attracted 14,200 people, raised £180,000, and went down as one of the most extraordinary occasions in the club's history.

Before that remarkable day, though, Hodgson had sought divine intervention.

"I decided to have the stadium blessed by the church. An unusual step, I know, but the stadium was hollow and soulless," he says.

"When the vicar arrived I told her I was embarrassed because I was not sure that it was the right thing to do. I asked if she could do or say something to make the stadium come alive.

"We walked out on to the pitch and she asked me all sorts of questions. Then she said a prayer and blessed the stadium, saying a wonderful piece about the club and giving us strength.

"I was quite choked by it - and it's not often that I'm speechless. When almost 15,000 fans turned up for the charity match, I thought to myself: 'Now the place has a soul'.

The battle for league survival then resumed, but the scoring exploits of striker Barry Conlon were attracting admiring glances from elsewhere.

"I was disappointed in both Rushden and Hartlepool because they made an approach to the administrator," says Hodgson.

"But going by the back door didn't work, because the administrator directed them to me.

"Swansea, Northampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Macclesfield came to me first. Macclesfield offered £45,000, Swansea £60,000.

"A lot of administrators would have snapped off the hand of the highest bidder, but not ours. They trusted my judgement and also realised that £60,000 was peanuts if it cost us our league status."

Off the field, the wild take-over boasts of self-proclaimed millionaire Ted Forster were "a distraction we could have done without". Hodgson did not even believe he existed.

But the interest of an Irish consortium keen to replace Hodgson with ex-Carlisle boss Roddy Collins was a particular source of irritation.

"What really annoyed me was that Roddy said that within a fortnight he would be manager," says Hodgson. "When the club was in crisis, that was out of order.

"When news broke of the possibility of Roddy Collins taking my job, all the players said they were leaving. Roddy turned up at our game with Bristol Rovers, but the lads stayed focused and won 3-0."

Collins went so far as to phone Conlon to tell him he could have been on his way to Darlington.

"Baz could have kept that to himself, but he didn't. He came and told me," says Hodgson. "That was the point when I knew for certain that I was working with good, honest lads."

An unbeaten run lifted Darlington away from the threat of relegation, leaving York and Carlisle to take the drop.

Ultimately, the Sterling Consortium, the financier that loaned £4m to Reynolds to complete work on the stadium, took charge - and immediately pulled down the giant Reynolds Arena signage.

"I followed George into the ground the day the lettering was being removed from the side of the stadium," says Hodgson.

"When he built it, I never imagined that I would be invited in, yet here I was driving in behind him.

"Despite all the problems and worry he had put me through, I felt for him enormously that day.

"He had put so much into the stadium, in time and energy as well as finance, that it was impossible not to feel for him as the lettering came down. It must have hurt him, but he didn't bat an eyelid.

"Yet while the stadium had changed hands and the tangible signs of George Reynolds were being removed, nobody can erase him from the history of the club.

"He is probably the biggest talking point in the club's history. Nobody will ever surpass the amount of publicity he generated, good and bad. Just like Jack Walker at Blackburn and Sir John Hall at Newcastle, George Reynolds changed the face of Darlington Football Club.

* David Hodgson will be signing copies of his book in Ottakars book store, the Cornmill Centre, Darlington, today from 10am-noon. The book costs £13.99 and is available from Ottakars in Darlington and Northallerton, the Yarm Bookshop, Castle Hill Books in Richmond, WHSmith in Darlington, Darlington and Middlesbrough club shops, Darlington Supporters' Club and Supporters' Trust, and Olympic Mini Stores in Darlington.

Read more about the Quakers here.