darlo on the brink of extinction

"Darlington's 25,000-seater stadium has come to represent the stark contrast between the lofty aims of former owner George Reynolds and the reality of their situation.

Reynolds revealed a five-year plan to take the club into the Premier League, with the stadium, then known as the Reynolds Arena, forming a key part of his ambitions.

In 2003 they went into administration for the first time as they struggled to meet loan repayments on the ground and they were back in administration in 2009, with the subsequent points deduction costing them a place in the League Two play-offs.

Relegation from the Football League followed in 2010, making the newly-named Northern Echo Arena the biggest ground in non-league football history."


A very sad situation indeed but I guess that's what you get if you let someone try to buy you success.
If anyone comes to Torquay with heaps of money then I hope they get shown the door.

A bit like building a new ground down by the sea front then!

To be fair a certain Mr Bristow turned up with a shed load of cash but his investment has taken us back to a sustainable level and with construction of his new bench underway, it is a somewhat more proportionate infrastucture improvement and hopefully that will contribute to the ongoing improvements seen at our club over the last five years.

A sad day indeed for Darlo and I can only point towards Aldershot as an example of what their fans can now achieve....

Hell of a gamble though. Do we try to buy ourselves into the premier league and take the risk of going out of business or do we consolidate ourselves as a long term stable and successful League1/2 club? Hypothetical I know but could we command the gates required to sustain the wage bill?
I remember Bristol City in the beginning of the 80's. Went into (then) league1, had high paying contracts, got relegated, went into admin, wangled their way out of it by dissolving the club and reforming as Bristol City 1981 (?) ltd and carried on where they left off! They couldn't have gotten away with it these days.
You are right, though, James when you say "It's not the money that's the problem - it's the man" but it is also knowing your limits.

Wash your mouth out with soap, young man!

I know that you will play the "relatively" getout card, but that phrase sums up what is so wrong with how some see football clubs.

If you have no affinity with a club and its history, then sod it. Gamble the club's future for a few days in the sun. It doesn't matter if you destroy the club, because if it isn't in the Championship or above it really isn't worth having anyway.

That kind of attitude makes my blood boil. Maintaining professional football (by which I mean Football League or top half of Conference) in certain towns is bloody hard work.

It's the dripping of the old "lack of ambition" poison that stops floaters from connecting with their local team. "If they aren't going to bother getting into the Championship, why should I bother going?"

Support your local team, revel in the achievement of 90+ years as a pro club, enjoy the good times and endure the bad times.

As regards rich people, you will never meet a nicer pair of multi-millionaires than Paul and Thea. Where would we be without them? I don't know, but I can guess.

The sums of money required to sustain a club above its "natural level" are phenomenal. When you look at how far throwing a couple of million into the mixer has got us, I am proud of what has been achieved in the last five years (although I'm sure we could have got better value for money if Mr Lee had been kept on a tighter leash).

But the progress wouldn't impress the glory seekers - just above mid-table League 2 wouldn't be enough for some to deem "ambitious" - and in years to come won't count as "history" for some.

I think what Paul and Thea have done is brilliant. Thea would not be doing us a favour if she said "Whack up your cost base and don't worry - I'll cover it." Sooner or later that would end - and history shows that clubs always struggle to cut their cost quickly enough when they really have to.

I'm very glad we have Thea in the background in case of emergency, but SUSTAINABLE is the way to go. If that gets us to League 1 then great. If it leaves us in League 2, no problem.

I don't want our club to have a Championship level wage bill. We'd be lucky to keep paying it for a year - we'd never pay it beyond that.

I've been following the club for 40 years. I want there to be a club there for me to follow for another 40 years (if I last that long). If there is, its doings will be history for me whether we hit the Championship or not. If that isn't good enough for young James, then so be it.

Ha, I knew I'd get a reaction! Was a bit tongue-in-cheek but I think there is something in it

Darlington are just going under today (announcement due in the next few minutes) and the media won't really give much of a toss. And not for the first time - Scarborough, Halifax, Chester, even Airdrie. Indeed, the fact that they are going under itself shows that there's a divide in England between the big clubs and the little clubs - big clubs usually aren't allowed to go under, while little clubs are, even if they have a long history (in terms of length of time - there's also the other sort of 'history' which is the equivalent of using 'literature' to refer to quality fiction). And while we as individuals might value that, I think the media not showing much of an interest does prove a point about that history not being particularly valuable, otherwise it would not be allowed to quietly slip away. In any case, they'll phoenix a couple of divisions lower and life will go on - and it'll provide a good story when they get to the FA Cup 1st Round in a couple of years time. All it is, effectively, is the resetting of a clock to zero and being relegated - you could argue that it's not all that significant an event in the long run

Now I have no intention of getting sucked into this media-induced attitude of believing only the football at the top levels is relevant. I do enjoy watching Premier League football, but my only team is Torquay United. But existing for the sake of existing in one of the lower leagues - be it League 2, the Conference, the Evo-Stik - with very few followers (comparatively speaking) is rather unadventurous, uninspiring, and is never going to be appealing to people when they've got other alternatives. The fact that we've never won anything in our entire history, and are unlikely to do so in the near future, isn't going to attract people beyond the narrow circle of the locality

I wouldn't say the media has indoctrinated football fans into believing only the top flight matters, but the fact that it's available on such a wide scale means we have a choice now. I don't think there has been a change in attitude towards football either - I just think that being all British about it and saying "it's not the winning but the taking part that counts" isn't realistic or how people actually think. Give them the option of supporting a team that's winning a lot at a higher level and has been for many years, and a team that's down in the lower leagues, lurching from good but not brilliant to poor but not dreadful, they're obviously going to pick the one that's winning - and that doesn't have to be Premier League vs League 2, because the same thing works for League 2 vs Evo-Stik

TV has taken away the local element, and will do so even more if the European Super League happens. Not that I'm necessarily saying that that's a bad thing, though...

all that terror and tension for all involved at darlo for a last minute stay of execution for now,to be re-evaluated in two weeks time,poor poor sods if they havent been through enough,but at least they are still going,many darlo fans would take that for sure

I didn't say it did. I just think there's something in that

How far do you want to take it? There are plenty of clubs smaller than Darlo that have gone under in recent years without much of a fuss being made - Fisher, Ilkeston, Newcastle Blue Star, Runcorn, Dawlish. It's a difficult one, because yes, these clubs each have a valid history, but you have to question whether it really matters an awful lot in the grand scheme of things, because they never made an impact outside of a very small area or number of people

You could say that the courts favour the bigger clubs and are unwilling to liquidate them - that the likes of Portsmouth and Argyle would've gone under had they not had so many fans, be it because the court or administrators thought there was financial potential in the clubs because they have so many fans, or because they simply don't want to rock the boat by being the ones to shut a big club down. But I think there's more to it than that

"Value" is obviously a subjective term and differs from person to person, so it's impossible to give a simply answer. You could say the number of people going to each game shows how many value the club. No club is worthless. But there comes a point where you have to say "this isn't really worth it any more" or "this isn't working". The amount of times Darlo have been in administration shows that there's something fundamentally wrong there - obviously the oversized stadium and ownership problems aren't helping in the slightest, but maybe they are operating at too high a level at the moment and need to start from scratch with a sustainable infrastructure, as Chester and Halifax have seemingly done

Ultimately, history is what it is - stuff that's happened in the past. Liquidation doesn't change that. If it's not working at that level, maybe they need to drop down a few levels and work their way back up. I know we've discussed this before but I don't believe liquidation to be as final as the media make it out to be - a club is the people, not the structure. 25 years on, no one remembers the fact that Middlesbrough were liquidated and reformed