The footballing world was aghast yesterday afternoon at the apparent demise of Darlington FC. The shocking news that came out of their last minute talks to save the club was that all the management staff and players had had their contracts terminated with immediate effect and unless the talks with the interested party and the administrator go well, by tomorrow, Darlo are bust.

There are a few questions that arise from this, apart from the obvious questions of how the players/management must be feeling, which is no doubt pretty crappy. The main issue is how Darlington can continue the season with no players and no funding.

These questions are ones that most people can only guess at and speculation into what will actually happen is a bit pointless considering the short time span that Darlington have left before seemingly inevitable liquidation. At the moment they have until midday tomorrow to thrash out a deal and it seems that George Houghton, the chairman before Raj Singh, is sniffing around. What is really interesting though is the amount of people who have commented on the disparity between rich and poor in football and how it would be nice if a player/club/white knight would give Darlo the money to survive.

Surely this misses the point though? Darlington can’t survive because their stadium is too big. George Reynolds has ruined any chance that the club could possibly survive in the lower leagues without a ridiculous amount of fans for a lower league club or a sugar daddy. A 27,000 seater stadium is unsustainable for a non-league team. Why should other players/clubs spend their money on a club that will be in exactly the same position in 18-24 months? As much as it pains me to say it, it is chucking away good money. Asking Premiership players to bail out a football club that has no realistic chance of surviving shows that some fans, no matter their good intentions, aren’t particularly pragmatic.

A more likely option is reforming the club – the immediate problem again being the stadium. Feethams is now a housing development and the Northern Echo Arena is too big to sustain a team of Darlington’s size. A new club may have to start outside of the town and eventually move back. This obviously poses a few more issues like funding for the new stadium, finding a suitable location for that ground and whether the fans would folow the team out of the town to a possible ground share (Bishop Auckland seem a good shout).

For this to happen, the Darlington Supporters Trust (DST) and the Darlington Football Club Rescue Group (DFCRG) need to work together to best use the £50,000 that the DST have. Currently there hasn’t been too much comment from the DST and this silence has been deafening. Quite rightly the DFCRG have been more vocal, although a little more provocative, than the DST which seems to be starting to cause a rift in between the two. They said last week that they had found a solution to the problem with undisclosed investors but also needed the DST money to complete the deal within a day.

This obviously didn’t materialize and now the DST seem to be looking like the unreasonable party as they did not even release a statement about the entire event. What is certain is that the two need to work together for the future of Darlington. If they do a Scarborough and end up having two teams in a small town they will never reach the heights of even the Conference.

For now though there is some hope for Darlington FC. I’m sure all the fans will be hoping for positive talks within the next day and a rescue plan will be thrashed out. What remains however is the stadium. And this may be too heavy a weight to bear for the club in the long term. If they are taken over they’ll probably be where they were in two years time.

Best of luck Darlington.

Photo courtesy of radioink.