Has Darlington played their last game?

[RalphC]

Darlington could cease to exist by the end of the week unless they find a

new owner, according to joint-administrator Harvey Madden.

The Quakers entered administration for the third time in nine years at the start of the

month after it emerged that some players had not received their wages, with

club captain Ian Miller terminating his contract as a result. Chairman Raj

Singh subsequently stood down from his role with the Blue Square Bet Premier

side, and Madden admits that despite interest from several parties,

Darlington's situation remains perilous. "Things are still dire," he said.

 

"We have not had any definite interest. We have seen a hell of a lot of

people interested in the last week. No one has taken it a step further and

quite a few have withdrawn. Without money, the club will not survive. I will

have to make decisions by the end of the week and assess it."

[Shayben]

It's a shame some clubs end up in financial trouble, especially for the fans, best of luck to Darlo..

 

Here's an interesting article looking at some of the issues:

 

http://staggmag.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/fc-insert-club-name-here/

[RalphC]

From the Guardian

 

DEATH KNELL PREPARES TO TOLL FOR DARLINGTON FC

The Quakers may have played their last match after 129 years of football, wrecked by a folly of a stadium which cost GBP25m and took fans from their beloved Feethams ground, by David Conn from the Guardian

 

Darlington Football Club, formed in 1883, founder members of the proud Northern League in 1889 and of the Football League's Third Division (North) in 1921, now in the Blue Square Bet Conference, are on their death bed. An administrator, appointed to handle the club's insolvent husk in the ridiculously outsized stadium built by George Reynolds, Darlington's last owner but three, says 129 years of football history could be over within days.

 

"As things stand we have no offers to take the club over, no money to keep it going, no reasons to be optimistic whatsoever," Harvey Madden, ofRowlands accountants, says. "We will be having meetings at the end of this week, possibly the beginning of next, but it does not look good."

 

At such times, thoughts turn to proud memories, and Darlo's post-War story is mostly one of serial, stubborn survival. The core of loyal fans aretaking pride in past players, from Arthur Wharton, England's first black footballer, who joined in 1885, to Craig Liddle, who played 315 matches indefence from 1998 to 2005. And at Feethams, the unique, charming ground for cricket and football, with its twin towers, which sits abandoned in thetown, missed by all who have shivered in Reynolds's 25,000-seat arena since he moved the club there nine years ago.

 

The last owner, Raj Singh, appointed Madden after declaring the club unsustainable at the arena, having thrown in around GBP2m in three years, and been crippled by the stadium's running costs. A local consortium is looking into salvage possibilities, but the overwhelming obstacle is the vanity stadium Reynolds built and named after himself.

 

With crowds of less than 2000 huddled into one stand, the Darlington Arena is a rattling monument to the reckless buying, selling and mismanagement of historic football clubs. The Football League used to laugh at the very idea of testing whether football club owners were "fit and proper people", and back then it presented Reynolds in supporting evidence. He was a respectable businessman, it said, whose criminal career, which earned him time in prison for robbery, was behind him, so how would a test barring criminals apply to him? The answer was obvious, incorporated into the fit-and-proper-person test when the League finally adopted it in 2004, that convictions are a bar until they are spent.

 

But Reynolds's case posed more difficult questions about his fitness, and the source of his money, which were never tackled, and to which football clubs are still vulnerable. He had made a fortune in chipboard, and via his company, GRUK, put GBP7m into Darlington, which was in financial difficulties then, with Feethams requiring repair.

 

Later, in 2005, Reynolds undertook not to act as a company director for eight years due to "unfit conduct" which, according to the Insolvency Service, was that the money was sunk into Darlington while GRUK was making "gross losses", "to the detriment of GRUK's creditors . imprudently or irresponsibly."

 

Reynolds, in his autobiography - Cracked It! - chronicled his criminal life as a safecracker and thief, and the Dickensian misery of his childhood, when he was consigned to a residential approved school, where he was beaten and abused. But sympathy and admiration for his success dried up among most Darlo fans because Reynolds was a bully who did not listen to supporters dissenting from his grand plan.

 

Had he done so, he would never have considered spending around GBP20m building a 25,000-seat stadium for the Quakers. In his time, and that of subsequent owners, it has proved a millstone to service, and a miserable experience for spectators. In October 2005 Reynolds, having lost the club and been forced to put it into administration, was convicted of defrauding the Inland Revenue and sentenced to three years in prison.

 

The arena is now owned by two businessmen, Philip Scott and Graham Sizer, who lent the last owner, George Houghton, GBP1.7m at 10% interest. They are not interested in taking over the club but said they will talk about a favourable rent deal for anybody who will. A local consortium has been formed but the shortage of money is so acute that Madden is warning the club will fold before they have had a chance to inspect the disastrous accounts and consider whether any plans are viable. Madden said he dismissed twelve staff the day he walked in because there was no money to pay them, and five employees remain, plus the players and the club legend Liddle, now the caretaker manager, awaiting their fate.

 

The supporters trust has raised GBP50,000 over years of rattling buckets, and some are urging it to hand that over now, to give the club a brief while longer to see if a rescue can be achieved. However, the trust says there is no viable long-term plan in which it can properly invest its members' money; they do not want to lose it for Madden's fees. For years, since the first in a straggle of administrations, the trust has been preparing contingency plans for forming its own supporter-owned club and starting again, as AFC Wimbledon, now in the Football League, did, should the club finally fold.

 

Claire Stone, the trust secretary - the chairman, Tony Taylor, resigned following abuse he received - said she takes her autistic son, and four other young people with similar difficulties, to Darlington's matches. "Going to support the football has been a great benefit to these children; they have learned to socialise with each other, and make friendships. If the club does fold, we will be devastated. We love the club, we want it to continue, but we cannot throw trust members' money into a black hole."

 

If Darlington do die, in the greatest financial boom English football has ever known, it will be at a folly of a stadium, built with millions improperly spent while Feethams, a beloved sporting home, sits rotting back in town.