Bank Holiday Monday, that curious old chestnut that used to be the first Monday of August in Scotland, but was moved in line with the rest of the UK. My colleagues who had kids used to moan, as essentially all schools are back by the time this day off comes around. A day without your children, what’s not to like about that, was always my thinking.
Anyway, back in the day, I was three years on the spin (a lack of imagination in the scheduling I fancy), watching Doncaster host Huddersfield at beloved old Belle Vue (2003 to 2005) where a draw, a win and a loss completed the set in these encounters. The matches were played in League Two as it now is for the opener, and then more lofty League One as Donny were on the cusp of reaching for the stars.
The full set of results from that trio of encounters doesn’t merit a 1,2,3, but this Bank Holiday Mondays trek to Darlington does. It’s been a few years since I could enjoy a late August trek south of a Monday, but I have always liked my jaunts to Darlo. Indeed, part of the reason they get a blog write-up is due to the Quakers being the only team I have seen anywhere in the world who have played at three venues in my lifetime. On Friday, by an odd quirk, I will see a game at Millmoor, but having missed seeing Rotherham United there, the Don Valley and New York remain the only two where Miller time was watched.
I was always a football fan, an enthusiast for small time teams, and in 1994, while returning to Edinburgh with my folks, I convinced them to have a little down time in Darlington, while I went to Feethams. I am glad I saw a match at the spiritual home of the club. It had character aplenty.
1/ Darlington 0-2 Bury
Saturday 8th October 1994
English League Division Four
It was an amazing walk around the cricket pitch to access Feethams, where the stands and terracing roofs had a great old school feel about it. I believe one terrace roof was eventually transported to their latest home, a semi-circular design that always reminds me of the stand at Firs Park, the old home of East Stirlingshire in Falkirk.
Bury were near the top of the league going into this one. Both teams played in stripes oddly, Darlo are more usually associated with a hoop, but they were wearing black and white stripes, while Bury had gone all Lecco, with two shades of blue in their stripes. A useful crowd was in Feethams, where Bury would eventually show the greater skill and urgency to score two second half goals to win it.
Darlington, a perennial lower league club found themselves at the behest of Mr Reynolds, a local lad made good, who maybe originally had loftier notions of where the Quakers could go than the sum of the investment or indeed enthusiasm. The era of home team loyalty was on a slippery slope, with the attractions of Newcastle, Sunderland or even Leeds, not too far away. It was also a time when other pastimes and interests saw attendance numbers generally in decline. So you can imagine the impossible task facing Darlington when they moved from Feethams into the hulking great Reynolds Arena, (or Darlington Arena as it was also known) which had a capacity of 25,000.
I would see two matches here in 2008 and 2011, versus Hereford United as they were known and York City. The first of these clashes forms game 2 of the trio.
2/ Darlington 0-1 Hereford United
Saturday 12th April 2008
English League Two
In some ways, this was almost the last hurrah of these two sides in the comfort of league football. Both were in with a shout of promotion, and the added attraction was to see Dave Penney plying his trade as the Darlo boss after his reverential spell at Doncaster.
I arrived early, super early in fact, because I had noted that the stadium bar showed live football, and as luck would have it, the early kick-off, perhaps a more rare animal in 2008, was a Scottish Cup Semi-Final where Aberdeen were playing serious underdogs Queen of the South. The bar was largely full of upbeat Bulls from Hereford, complete with a mighty distinctive accent, one I was familiar with to an extent courtesy of a guy who cheered for Meadowbank back in the day. I have no idea of his name, we used to call him Hereford!
For a lengthy spell I was the only one interested in watching the game, as much jaunty upbeat banter and few pints were sunk following their lengthy trek. In the first half both teams traded goals, but it was the mad start to the second half that started to get heads turning and everyone glued to the action. In a game of, Queens scored first, then got pegged back, within a silly 11 minutes, five goals flew in! With 30 minutes still to go, everyone was convinced it would be a 5-5 or better, but the goals dried up, and QoS made the final 4-3. Darlo and Here Ford (as Robert De Niro would call it in a movie!) fans, all with black and white scarves and mingling together, delighted in an underdog victory. It timeously concluded for the bar to clear straight to the turnstiles (probably via the loo) and the start of the League Two promotion gig.
Hereford would win it narrowly 1-0. The atmosphere was lost in the vast stadium, but both sets of fans endeavoured to replicate the Hampden extravaganza, but with just one solitary goal, it was a bit an “off the Lord Mayors Show” kind of an affair.
Hereford would get promoted directly to the third tier, the last they’d see of such heights before slipping down the ladder to the National League North, where both clubs post implosion regularly joust these days. Back in 2008, Darlo made the playoffs but didn’t make it up, losing on penalty kicks to Rochdale, who in turn, still the great bastion of the fourth tier football back then, lost to Stockport in the final. Mansfield and Wrexham took their bow from the league that year. Both have adequately bounced back, albeit buoyed by wealthy financiers.
Three years later, I was back for a first ever viewing of non-league Darlo, and I saw them both score finally, and win, 2-1 against York, where a crowd of just shy of 3,000 was even more lost than the game three years prior. Implosion was just around the corner for Darlington sadly.
3/ Darlington 0-1 Bradford Park Avenue
Monday 26th August 2019
National League North
It was hardly the race to the bottom, but the phoenix from the flames has seen the Quakers largely ensconced in the 6th tier, the National League North, for a number of years now. A place where many an old league club still resides, and some, like Stockport and more recently, Scunthorpe have finally managed to break out. But Hereford are here, Chester, Southport, and a returning Macclesfield this term.
The plan was to watch Darlo versus Southport at their new home Blackwells Meadow in March 2018, but serious rain overnight had rendered that possibility untenable, even if the football app hadn’t changed, and I pitched up en route home at a deserted stadium where pools of surface water viewed over the fence confirmed what I had already suspected.
A year and a bit later, as luck would have it, on one of these delightful Bank Holiday Monday affairs, another old bastion of stalwart league football Bradford Park Avenue were in town. Dave Beecroft, another eclectic Meadowbank fan, who ran the Sons of the Desert Laurel and Hardy fan club was a BPA boy. These things stick with you. The Meadowbank fans were a wide and varied, largely intellectual bunch.
Darlington reverted to type when I appeared, and indeed in my three selections, they haven’t even managed a goal! Bradford, as they were referred to back in the day, won it with a solitary goal, much to the disappointment of a fine crowd enjoying the sunshine as much as the game. Bradford have subsequently fallen two levels further, while Darlington are largely a mid-table 6th tier side. Whether that is about to change tomorrow when Telford AFC come calling, well lets see. No ex-league side clash this one, a first in Darlington for me, perhaps an acknowledgement that seeing them rise through the league is a bit off yet.
In one of my articles in the new Football Weekends, I pontificate and try to get into the mindset of a fan who just goes to a game to bag a ground and get a tick. That is not how my mind works. If I enjoy a team, or a stadium, I will be back. Darlo aren’t in the same category as Doncaster, but I will always keep an eye on their progress, or lack thereon. The Blackwells ground is basic, and not my favourite, so it is obviously the team who draws my attention. With three away day matches at Spotland, Rochdale, Chorley and Curzon Ashton, a win and two losses added to the roster, making this my 8th Darlington match, enough to get them into the top 3 of most viewed English sides on my viewing CV well behind Doncaster obviously, but just one game behind Carlisle.
The next 1,2,3- Monopoli- written in Italia
Football Adventures with James Rendall 