One last time - Darlington FC

Taken from the Darlington FC website

Darlo fan and journalist Dan List pens an emotional feature about Saturday's trip to Barrow...

So that looks like that. The bell is tolling for Darlington Football Club and it appears as though the final whistle on Saturday called time not only on a highly-emotional afternoon, but on our very existence.

As the whistle blew there was a moment of sudden reality, a realisation that the club we all hold so close to our hearts was more than likely no more, resigned to be a statistic, to be another ex-football club, to simply be history.

But for Darlington fans, if Saturday proved one thing, it's that this doesn't have to be the case. As I looked around I saw what supporting a football club should mean.

There I saw the usual faces, pale, dejected and teary-eyed. However, if there was a risk of tears from myself it was soon allayed, for when you looked beyond this desperation, you saw what it meant to support our club.

There were arms round shoulders, reassuring words and a sense of togetherness that has been absent for too long. We had found our identity again.

The weight had been lifted, we were no longer a safe cracker's ego trip or a cowboy's plaything.

For one last time we were simply Darlington Football Club, standing amongst friends and watching the team do us proud. That is what football should be about for every fan of every club.

It was then that it became clear that the club can't die because Darlington FC is more than just a name, it's a community.

Even if starting all over again remains the only way to maintain this, maintain it we must. And, if we can draw upon a level of togetherness similar to that we all showed as the lady was whistling, we can only succeed.

The unity at Barrow showed that if the club ceases to be, then 128 years of history will not be lost. It will be carried forward in the hearts and minds of the people that make the club what it is.

The biggest myth surrounding our club at present is that it's dying because of finances, stadiums and other factors too numerous to mention.

On a literal level this may be the case, but in terms of what Darlington FC represents, the truth is the club died a good while ago.

In recent years this club has treated good people badly. From David Hodgson to Steve Foster, to countless other players and people behind the scenes that have worked so hard drive the club forward, too many have been mistreated by this club and its owners in the past decade.

What they all failed to realise is they might have owned the club, but the club will never be theirs. It's ours.

What we now is an opportunity to rebuild our club, as a phoenix from the ashes baptised by the tears of real football fans.

So if Saturday was to be our last call, our heads should not be hung in sorrow, but held high, for it is fans of clubs like Darlington that make football what it is.

We will be back some day, and this time we will no longer be a rich man's plaything.

The fans might not be millionaires but it is us that are all the richer for belonging to something very special for the past 128 years.



RIP Darlington F.C from Hartlepool.