Plight night for Quakers' die-hards

All sorts of anxious assemblies have been held there over the years, at the end of which gentlemen have been known to come down the stairs rather more quickly than they ascended.

On Tuesday evening the room hosted a gathering of Darlington FC Supporters' Trust, and friends, and if not quite trussed hand and foot then certainly fighting with one hand halfway up their backs.

The club was in administration, the volatile chairman had upped and offed, the third division table wobbled like a twopence ha'penny stool. Words like "mess" and "crisis" were bandied about, but most of all "plight."

Tuesday was plight night at the Red Lion.

The column pitched up at half-time, like those traditionally seeking to get in without paying. Posters of the "Your country needs you" sort lined the walls, empty glasses had been needfully refilled, Margaret Tinkler puffed anxiously at her fag.

They'd been discussing fund raising, and how to find £250,000, and how long they had to find it.

Margaret, the chairman, lit another cigarette. "Nerves," she said, simply.

Among the problems is credibility, that they might be seen to be crying wolf, or even sheep's clothing. "All people see is that shiny stadium," someone said.

"If we don't get our fingers out in the next six weeks, it won't be a stadium, it'll be a mausoleum."

It was Save the Quakers yet again, the deja vu view.

There was talk of celebrity football matches and of sponsored car washes, of buckets - crying buckets - at every league ground. They mooted song and dance at the Civic and sportsmen's dinners at anywhere they might get their feet beneath the table.

It was amazing, everyone agreed, how much people would pay out when they'd had a few.

Rather fewer wanted to have a go at George Reynolds, nor even to suggest that they'd been taken for a ride on his much- vaunted escalators, though Pete Ashmore did turn biblical, like a verse out of Exodus.

"There's a misunderstanding that George Reynolds will come down and smite us all still," he said.

They have a short time and a tall order. Even £250,000 might do little more than patch a hole, not save the ship.

"We need a couple of thousand more at the next home game," someone said, "so we can put two fingers up at George."

The meeting, perhaps unwise to call it a conference, ended at 10pm. As at recent matches, a number had left long before the final whistle.

The supporters will need all the support they can get.

Margaret Tinkler is a secretary at Skerne Park primary school, prefers the style "chairman" to anything synonymous with furniture, admits that eyebrows have been raised.

"People have pointed out that I'm a woman," she says. "I congratulate them on being so observant."

Brought up with rugby union - her father was vice-president of Darlington RA - she began watching the Quakers after meeting her husband Colin, stood down for 20 years when the children arrived, returned three or four years ago.

"I never stopped supporting them, I just didn't go," she argues. "When we went down into the Conference it really hit me and when we came back it was like winning the FA Cup, the atmosphere in the town was amazing."

Her first match back was on a free ticket, given by George Reynolds. "I'd been pestering him for one and he gave me half a season ticket," she admits.

She is 49 - "just" - followed Colin onto the Trust board, took over when they decided to make the chairmanship an annual appointment. "I just picked the wrong year," says Margaret, cheerfully.

She wears the trousers, too, and battles, as it were, manfully.

The Trust, unalone, had warned that the club chairman's eyes were bigger than the public belly. Proved right, they draw no satisfaction.

"I think we saw a lot of this coming," says Margaret. "We were telling the fans and so many just didn't believe us.

"They thought we were just trying to make trouble, to get George Reynolds out, but it wasn't originally what we wanted to do. We wanted to work alongside him; unfortunately it didn't happen."

She's trying to juggle work, family and football and losing sleep over it. "At the moment my mind is racing. I think part of me still believes this isn't real.

"It's very difficult to say what will happen when we don't know all the facts and figures and how much the town will get behind us but I feel so sorry for the players because they really are working hard and David Hodgson has created an excellent atmosphere.

"The last three games I can't believe we haven't scored, like there was clingfilm between the posts. If it was down to passion and effort, we'd win every match."

Whatever George Reynolds may suppose, she insists there is no personal animosity.

"I just think it's a shame that he wouldn't listen to so many people, people in football and in the media. Everybody could see it and he just wouldn't have it.

"What he doesn't understand is that football is a performance and that people want to watch the performance, not the stage. Now we mightn't even have the stage."

* Supporters' Trust annual membership is £5, juniors under 16 £1, from the Membership Secretary, 71 Grangewood Street, East Ham, London E6 1HB. Donations also welcome. Details on www.darlotrust.co.uk

A personal word, please, on George Reynolds, about whom more may have been written in the past few years than any North-East sporting figure except Sir Bobby.

There was a big piece in Monday's Times. Only George's wife and children have a good word for him, it said, and thereby forgot about me.

We've known one another for 35 years, shared larks - what larks - and made sparks. I was his best man, not this one the one before, when if he didn't exactly have nowt he still thought the Rich List was the Brancepeth electoral roll.

That wedding was at Bishop Auckland register office, the next at a baronial castle in Scotland. I wasn't invited, not because we'd fallen out or anything but because there was a deluge of Del Monte men anxious to say "Yes, yes, yes" when what George desperately, desperately needed was someone to stand square and say No, no, no.

To George, crime was simply a game of cops and robbers. When finally he grew out of it, about the age of 35, he made millions out of honest entrepreneurial instinct.

Then he made mistakes, as we all do. Ego became a four- letter word and wasn't his only Achilles; he was single minded as a C road is single tracked, little hope of being by-passed and still less of reconstruction.

In matters like the nocturnal visits, and in bragging about them, he has been extraordinarily foolish but he has been as immensely loyal as he was spectacularly stubborn, a colourful man who saw everything in black and white.

He has also been exceedingly generous. Ask the folk of Witton-le-Wear to whom he gave £100,000 for a new hall, or the loyal workers who got cars and paid-up mortgages, or the sports and voluntary bodies - I could name quite a lot - which substantially and spontaneously he helped.

There are too many, not least some Darlington supporters, who fought for a slice of him when he was up and now queue to kick lumps from him when he's down. I won't be among them.

The second last time I saw George was after the dismal 0-0 draw with Southend, the innate ebullience all drained from him following a game that not even the new floodlights could illumine. For one thing, they weren't properly aligned.

Hospitable as always, he looked mentally spent and physically finished. "It does your head in," he said, and I worried about him all night.

We will remain pals. When the Darlo dust is finally shaken from his shoes and he has settled into a tranquil and contemplative retirement, perhaps we shall sit in the Timothy Hackworth and reminisce about all that has happened.

He will be welcome in this house any day but preferably not, old friend, at two o'clock in the morning.

Backtrack briefs...

The Rev Will Jordan may have been hiding his light under a bushel, as a New testament scholar might suppose.

We wrote of him on Tuesday, pre-war Vicar of St Cuthbert's, Darlington, Darlington FC director and former amateur centre forward with West Brom.

What we didn't say, or know, is that Jordan was also an amateur international, scored six on his debut against France and inbetween Liverpool Reserve and West Brom also played for Langley Church, Langley Victoria and Langley St Michael's.

In 36 Football League games for West Brom he scored 19 times - "one of the most brilliant amateurs of his day, a centre forward with sport and precision, speed and deadly marksmanship," says the big book of Baggies, per Steve Smith.

Spells followed at Everton and Wolves before Jordan crossed the river and joined the Church. He died, aged 63, in 1949.

Still with the God squad, an e-mail from the Rev Tony Buglass at Pickering asks who's the most unpopular man on the terraces at Borussia Moenchengladbach?

The one who chants "Give me a B...."

Over 40s League secretary Kip Watson reports consternation before Owton Manor's game in Hartlepool last Saturday, when with 15 minutes to kick-off there was no sign of the referee.

The Owton Manor secretary ("We call him Biffo the Bear," volunteers Kip) lived near the ref and volunteered to find out what was wrong.

Knocked up, the gentleman answered the door in pyjamas. "I didn't know I had a game," he said.

"Yes you did," said Biffo, "I reminded you in the pub last night."

"They like their Friday nights in Hartlepool," says Kip.

And finally...

The Premiership club which began life as St Domingo FC (Backtrack, January 14) was Everton.

Now that Scarborough have again drawn Chelsea, those of us present readily recall the last time - League Cup, October 4 1989, and 83 places between the two sides.

Level 1-1 after the Stamford Bridge leg, Scarborough were 2-0 down early in the second half before goals from Tommy Graham and Paul Robinson and a disputed penalty from Martin Russell put them through and most of us went bananas.

"The biggest night in the club's history," concluded the Echo. Readers may simply wish to add the identity of the League Cup sponsor in 1989-90.

The answer, and a weather permitting report from Beartown, when the column returns on Tuesday.

Published: 16/01/2004