WHEN Andy Williams declared that this is the most wonderful time of the year, I’m guessing he had other things on his mind than us celebrating our long-awaited return to the town and the opening of Blackwell Meadows. As is always the case, it’s hard not to get caught up in all of the festive fun but this year is going to be that little bit more special.

Come Monday at 3pm, there’s going to be 3,000 fans crammed in to a space that until now I’ve seen no more than a hundred occupy. It will be a strange scene. We’ve done new grounds before but this will be a bit different.

For the majority of Darlo fans over the age of 20, Feethams was home. As a little kid, the place felt enormous and yet it really wasn’t. It was piecemeal in its design – where wasn’t until the mid-1990s? It was home. I never envisaged us leaving despite the annual talk of new stadiums. I still remember the line in a copy of Where’s The Money Gone regarding speculation of a new stadium that would be the size of the San Siro for our 2,000. We all knew nothing would come of those pipedreams.

Indeed, the closest thing I thought we would ever get to modernisation was the new East Stand. Little did we know the building of that glorious structure would be the start of our decline.

The move to the Arena was a bit surreal. I don’t think many won’t have bought into George Reynolds’ dream. We thought he was going to plough money in to make the place work. He didn’t. The Arena was a fine venue but it wasn’t Feethams. We had a stadium when in reality we yearned for a ground.

When that care home operator from Yarm, whose name I shall not repeat, tried to finish us off, a part of me was glad that we were finally leaving the Arena. I never really had a beef with the place but it just didn’t feel like home.

The past four and a half years has reinvigorated us as a club, as a group of fans and, for me at least, has renewed my interest in football. Gone are the rows and rows of empty seats in soulless, homogenised, symmetrical stadiums, replaced with terraces and club houses and everything that football used to be until the mid-1990s. Grounds built in piecemeal fashion once again, redeveloped as and when a little bit of money allowed it. I’m not usually one for nostalgia but it’s a good look for football.

And so we get to our new little home. There’s nothing modern-stadia about Blackwell Meadows. A little seated stand that we could just about afford along with a wonderful nod to our Feethams past with the original Tin Shed coming out of retirement to serve us once again. There’ll be some who don’t like it. There’ll be those who are used to a bit more luxury. Better sightlines will be had almost everywhere else. However, for all the nuances, good or bad, they will be our nuances. Blackwell Meadows won’t replace Feethams. Nowhere could replace our spiritual home. But, I suspect over the coming years, it will provide us with the sort of memories that just weren’t possible at the Arena.

I’d like to think that there’ll be some seven or eight-year-old kids coming along to Blackwell Meadows taking in their first Darlo games and being bitten by the bug that got us all. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll look around and think “wow, this place is big” and, just like me at Feethams, think it’s the centre of the footballing universe. If Blackwell Meadows can generate a fraction of the magic that Feethams did, then we’ll all quickly fall in love with our new home and enjoy many years of new and exciting memories.