Flexible Friends... (From The Northern Echo)

Flexible Friends...

8:31pm Friday 6th January 2012 in Peter Barron By Peter Barron

There is nothing like a crisis for pulling people together.

The crisis threatening the future of Darlington Football Club has shown that having a professional football club representing the town does matter.

The fans' appeal to raise cash for the players started out as an attempt to make sure they were fed and watered on the trip to Barrow tomorrow.

In just a few days, the total now stands at £8,000, which is a magnificent effort.

The small group of businessmen who formed the Darlington Football Club Rescue Group are also playing a blinder.

There was a need for a catalyst to focus minds in the local community and the group has performed that role admirably, pulling the relevant figures together.

It is good news indeed that chairman Raj Singh is prepared to walk away from the club without a penny. Having invested a lot of his own money in the club, he deserves credit for keeping hope alive - albeit slim hope - that a rescue deal can be agreed.

The key to that deal lies with the owners of the stadium and surrounding land, Philip Scott and Graham Sizer, getting together with Darlington Borough Council to see if there is any flexibility on existing planning constraints.

Those constraints are rightly in place to protect local residents, and to ensure taxpayers get value for money for their land.

Therefore, it should be acknowledged that Darlington council is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Nevertheless, as we said earlier this week, every avenue has to be explored before Darlington Football Club is consigned to history.

Unless a white knight with huge pockets rides to the rescue, a little flexibility on all sides is the only hope of saving the club.