Reynolds comes out fighting

Withering fire, they used to call it.

Though not necessarily adopting the Swiss position, the column has kept its head purposefully beneath the parapet.

We are very old friends after all, right back to the late 1960s when this wet eared journalist held a provisional licence for the press box at Bishop Auckland magistrates and George seemed to have a season ticket for the dock.

We knew him when he had nothing, nowt nor summat anyway, could tell tales all night about him and on hind leg occasion have been known to do so.

Nobody ever asks George who?

Once the lad from Dock Street East in Sunderland had a milky coffee bar, then a cosy little swing-a-cat night club, then a successful joinery business, a multi-million pound worktop empire and now Darlington Football Club, whose 27,500 seat stadium opens in August and which on Wednesday literally coruscated in the sunshine.

He is genuinely generous, frequently forthright, perennially pugnacious, often endearing, occasionally utterly out of order and in each of those respects he hasn't changed a whit.

If ever a man observed the Shakespearian maxim about "To thine own self be true", it is George; if anyone devoutly did it his way, same feller.

George, it might artlessly be added, is a man with the courage of his convictions.

He's still wearing the hair grip, too.

Perhaps the most telling insight of all, however, is that when we did the stadium tour on Wednesday - St George's Day - the man from the ermine echelons of the Sunday Times rich list switched off the lights at every opportunity.

"It goes back to the days of poverty, when the electric bill would come and you didn't know how the hell you'd ever pay it," he said.

"You never forget that."

It should at once be said that the new ground is stupendous, will be even better when quite finished, and that if the man who saved the Quakers feels proud of his achievement then he has every right in the world to do so.

As a joiner might, he also knows his wood.

"That's solid oak, that's black ash, maple, mahogany, marquetry."

There's marble effect, too, stainless steel, state-of-the-art toilet fittings imported from Italy.

We didn't quite follow the plumbing, but apparently it's possible to wash a lot more than your hands.

"You have to look at every little detail," says George and by way of detail announces that on the level above the spacious reception area there'll be a grand piano played by a stuffed pig in Dr Marten's boots and pink hunting coat which usually answers to Sylvia.

Sylvia used to sit at the head of the board room table when he owned Direct Worktops in Shildon, now lives in a warehouse and has raves (says George) with Willie Worktop.

The grand piano will be one of those mechanical jobs.

"We couldn't do all this and not include Sylvia, she's been with us too long," says the chairman.

The tour begins at the temporary reception area, continues in George's Range Rover through the tunnel and around the running track - a lap of honour almost - is occasionally interrupted by the stirring Grand March from Aida, the ringing tone on his mobile. Pom-pom, pommedy-pom-di-pom, pommedy-pommedy-pom...

"I don't understand technology," says the loquacious George, though happily for the mobile phone operator's profits he knows how to use one. Chewing gum manufacturers would similarly suffer if ever he went back to fat cigars.

The stadium's phones go live today, the first staff move in next week.

"I can't wait," says a passing young lady called Lisa. The post code's DL2 1GR - coincidence, he insists.

Staff have huge padded chairs, the chairman - a man who drives a hard bargain and usually drives it downwards - has the biggest.

He'll share an office with Ian Robinson, the right-hand man he first employed 20 years ago when he worked on a coal lorry.

He's in good form - autobiography selling well, team revived, doubters soon to be silenced.

"I made a predicament about this place and it's come true," says George, a man who mangles words like a Victorian washer woman and scatters aitches like linguistic lilac blossom to the wind.

The phone rings again, pommedy-pom-di-pom, to herald a chap from the Carlisle Evening News and another chance to rehearse his opinion of sports reporters. ("Irishmen with their brains bashed in".)

Hitler, he tells the caller - "nothing personal" - would have given all of them the Iron Cross.

"Michael Knighton is a gentleman. I'm a harsole."

We're in one of the 30 executive boxes, 21 sold (by Michael Knighton, the former Carlisle owner who's now Darlington's commercial manager) within two days.

They're magnificent, set for dinner right down to the champagne (if not the ice) on the sideboard.

"Manchester United have good executive boxes, but these are better, you have to give people the best," he says.

"I've heard everyone say I'll never fill this ground, but that's crap. Sunderland were getting 10,000-11,000 at Roker Park before they moved, Middlesbrough have been down to 6,000 at Ayresome Park, Rushden and Diamonds were getting 180.

"I don't kid myself that we can be the biggest club, I never intended us to be, but we can offer the best hospitality and have the best stadium. People say it's not finished and they're right. I haven't put the goal posts up yet.

"No third division club in Europe will have anything like this, not in the world."

The view is of a breath-taking new ground where 18 months ago was muck and rubble, club name picked out in red and white seats along the sides, "Quakers" at one end.

"It said Quackers," insists George. "No one realised for a week until my wife Susan pointed it out."

Oh come on, George. "It's true, on my kids' lives. What with me being dyslexic...."

The club motif - town clock, Locomotion No 1, Quaker hat - is embossed everywhere, even the transparent lift sides which the chap has come to test.

"They're all strange, these artistic people," says George.

There'll be bar, bistro, Platinum Club reminiscent in an altogether grander way of the dear old GR Club, formerly the Snowplough Hall, in Shildon where once he booked Peters and Lee for £12 and wouldn't add a shilling, though they'd become top of the pops in the interim. Afterwards we have lunch, as old friends should sometimes. Before that he has to pose for more photographs, adjusting once again the world's most famous hair grip.

"I've my street cred to think about," he says.

The ground will open, amid much fanfare, at the start of the new football season. If the chairman makes an entrance to the Grand March from Aida, none should be at all surprised. If he calls it the Told You So Stadium, he'd be entitled to that, an' all.

Backtrack briefs

By way of balance - for which this column is, of course, renowned - we spent Monday afternoon as guests of Hartlepool United for a rather deflated promotion party against Rochdale.

The programme published a top ten of Pools' celebrity fans, headed by Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling, Iron Maiden guitarist Janeck Gers in third and poor old Peter Mandelson ninth, one below Alan Shearer.

There was no place at all for Lord Burlison of Rowlands Gill, particularly unfortunate as he was the only one who was there.

Tom Burlison, now 66 and still smiling, played 148 Football League games for Hartlepool and 26 for Darlington before ultimately becoming deputy general secretary of the GMWU, secretary of the Labour Party and a hard working life peer.

Disappointed? "I shall have to live with it," he said.

We sat next to the lads from Blackhall RAFA, their £40 at 33-1 on Graeme "Spike" Lee scoring the first goal again shot down in flames. "Sounds a pretty fair bet," we said.

"Not when you've been placing it every home match this season," said Blackhall.

Though he appears much different from George Reynolds, we also sought an interview with Hartlepool chairman Ken Hodcroft. The crack, it's to be hoped, ere long.

That morning to the Durham Challenge Cup final, Billingham Synthonia 0 Horden 1, the Royal Corps of Groundhoppers dutifully in attendance.

Conspicuously absent, however, was Hartlepool postman John Dawson - personal best, 284 games a season - who underwent a heart bypass last Wednesday, was released six days later but has been advised to keep his feet on the ground for a while.

"You could tell he still wasn't quite right. He left his sausage and chips," says a hospital visitor.

John's comeback, apparently, is pencilled in for the Albany Northern League Cup final. It's at Feethams, Billingham Synners v Shildon, 11am Monday May 5.

Headed "Ringers, mercenaries and rewards" and addressed to "Ye of little faith", an exultant e-mail has arrived from Evenwood Town manager Ken Houlahan, he of the appliance of science.

Town qualified for the Craven Cup final, for Northern League second division clubs, with a 2-0 victory over South Shields on Tuesday.

"We were the only team in the semi-finals who don't pay their players," says Ken. "All they got was a free pint off the manager which brought the bar bill to £25."

It was a good game, good support, Sunderland season ticket holders in attendance and, says Ken, three dozen Taylor's best mince pies sold. It seems a shame to burst the bubble, therefore, but Taylor's pork pies are better altogether.

Tuesday's column mistakenly said that Brandon Station FC had won the Durham Minor Cup. It was the Durham Trophy.

As several readers have kindly pointed out, the Durham Minor Cup final is at Durham City next Thursday between West Auckland Queens Head and Wheatley Hill WMC.

The Queens have already won the Norman Wright Cup and were runner-up on Monday in the Colin Waites.

Brandon Station, meanwhile, have also won the Auckland Charity Cup, though wherever charity begins it definitely wasn't there.

Defeated opponents Darlington Albion have been reported to Durham FA following a series of post-match incidents which culminated in Hartlepool referee Dave Hudson allegedly having a pint of beer poured over him.

Auckland Charity Cup chairman Bob Strophair is carefully non-committal. "We shall decide what action to take after we've heard from Durham FA," he says.

And finally...

The only other side apart from Bedlington Terriers to have won five successive Northern League titles (Backtrack, April 22) is Blyth Spartans.

Fred Alderton, who knew that one, seeks the identity of the only European national football side from a country which hasn't a league.

The small time again on Tuesday.

Published: 29/04/2003