Friday 2nd December 2022 8:20pm – The National League North – Blackwell Meadows, Darlington
Name the top ten night’s out in Britain and I very much doubt many people would put Darlington in their list. But those people are wrong because it is an excellent place to go for some craft beers, superb food and a decent game of football. Unless someone accidentally turns the lights off.
A work trip had seen me head north earlier in the day, and with the opportunity to complete my “116” the following lunch time at Gateshead, a game 30 minutes south of Newcastle on Friday night was too good an opportunity to miss. There’s few clubs in the English footballing pyramid who can lay claim to have had three grounds of their own in two decades. A few clubs have had a nomadic past, forced to play away from their original home for a variety of reasons, such as Brighton & Hove’s exile at Gillingham, or Charlton Athletic’s at Selhurst Park and The Boleyn Ground. But Darlington have called three different grounds in the town home since 2003 – quite achievement considering how small the footprint of the town is.
It’s been twenty seasons since Darlington left Feethams, now a Sainsbury’s supermarket, on the promise of a land of milk and honey, a dream created by George Reynolds. He funded a brand new stadium on the edge of town, an opulent 25,000 all seater affair, way too big for the ambitions and reality of a club playing in the fourth tier. Reynolds over extended himself in the pursuit of a well-trodden road of a ‘build it and they will come’ dream and within a year of moving into the stadium, the club were in administration and looking for a new owner.
The Reynolds era was the beginning of the end for the club, which cumulated in the winding up of the 120 year old entity and the formation of a phoenix, fan-owned club that had to start climbing the leagues again from the Northern League, Step 5 of the Non-League pyramid. They were forced to play away from the town for a period, returning eventually in December 2016 with a deal to share with the rugby club at Blackwell Meadows.
Fast forward six years and the club are challenging at the top of Step 2, happy in their home sharing with the rugby club…except when someone turns the lights off by accident.
With work done for the week I headed out into the town center. A visit to the fantastic House of Hops, Orb Alehouse and Number Twenty2 and then onto Salt, an upscale burger joint that was highly recommended to me and didn’t disappoint. A fifteen minute walk down to the ground and I was inside with five minutes to spare before the teams emerged. But something didn’t seem right. It took a few seconds to realize that it was dark. Very dark. Too dark for football. Someone hadn’t turned the floodlights on. Or more precisely, as I was informed by a Darlington fan, someone had turned the lights off.
It seems the floodlights in the ground are on the same circuit as those on the training pitches, so when the game there had finished, they turned the lights off, plunging the fans, players and officials gathering in the ground into temporary darkness. Floodlights don’t come on at the flick of a switch – they have to slowly warm up and so there was no way the game was going to start at 7:45pm. By 8pm half the lights were on and the club announced it would be a 8:15pm start. Nobody seemed to mind too much, with the TVs in the bar showing the World Cup offer a warm haven.
We finally got underway at 8:20pm. Darlington knew a point would take them top of the league, at least for 24 hours and started positively, taking the lead in the 8th minute when Jacob Hazel was the first to react to the through ball, and whilst a Kettering player got a foot to it, the ball eluded the reach of the visitors keeper. The big striker scored a second fifteen minutes later, tapping in from close range after some excellent work down the left-hand side has seen a low ball drilled across the area.
It looked game over for the visitors but they were back in it within three minutes, Sam Bennett capitalising on a mistake just inside the Darlington half and running almost unchecked goal-wards before smashing the ball home from the edge of the box.
Chances fell at both ends of the pitch as the half wound down. A final Kettering corner wasn’t cleared and eventually the ball fell to George Cooper and he levelled the scores.
Naturally, after a four-goal first half it was odds on there’d be no further goals in the second. Both teams huffed and puffed, with Darlington pinning Kettering Town back in the final third for long periods but without really testing Cameron Gregory. Honours even and whilst it wasn’t the three points they craved, the single point took Darlington to the top of the table.
It had been a decent, if unexpectedly so, night out. Everyone loves a story of a football club putting the problems of the past behind them and regaining their former status (OK, unless it is your bitter rivals) in the right way, the Darlington way in this case.
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