DREAMS of achieving a fourth promotion in five seasons appear to have been dashed for Darlington Football Club after a National League decision to deny them a play-off position. 

Quakers will enter into a formal Football Association appeals process against the ground grading decision.

The end-of-season hammer blow for supporters was announced by Darlington’s board of directors, who revealed the club’s ground does not have enough fan seating.

Under National League regulations, last updated in May 2016, clubs seeking promotion must provide at least 500 covered seats for spectators – Darlington has 280.

The Quakers are fifth in the Vanarama National League North table and could qualify for the final position for the League’s North and South play-offs.

However, League officials ruled the Blackwell Meadows-based outfit missed a March 31 deadline to deliver enough seating to reach “Category A” ground requirements.

Ironically, had Quakers achieved automatic promotion as champions, it would have been granted an extended 12 month period to complete ground upgrades.

In December 2016, Malcolm Cundick, Blackwell Meadows project manager, confirmed to The Northern Echo that plans were in place to expand its seating capacity to prepare for promotion.

A spokesman for the Darlington FC board of directors said: “The requirement to have 500 covered seats across two stands as at March 31 2017 came about as a result of a change to the ground grading rules in May 2016, which was not picked up at the time of the development of Blackwell Meadows.

“The rules prior to May 2016 allowed temporary seating to be used for the play-offs as long as the club could show that it had obtained planning permission and had detailed plans to construct a permanent seated stand – which we of course do.

“To this end, the board obtained quotes for the relocation of the seating currently residing at Heritage Park, which belongs to the club, in order to satisfy the requirement.

“This change in the requirement for permanent covered seating was only brought to the board’s attention in the past couple of months.

“By the time the board was fully aware of the requirement, it was not able to act because of the timescales involved and lack of funds available.”

The Darlington FC spokesman added: “Our manager, Martin Gray, is very frustrated at this situation, as the incredible efforts of the players and coaching staff will not give us the chance of promotion this year unless the appeal is successful.

“We are as disappointed as everyone else that our success on the field is not reflected in our ability to move to a higher level.

“But, we would remind everyone that had we thought that we would be playing back in our home town, in the second tier of the non-league pyramid, under our original name, and all within five years of that fateful day in 2012, not many would have had faith in that dream.”

Darlington MP Jenny Chapman believes the club can bounce back from the “arbitrary decision” and said: “This is a setback and yet again demonstrates the football establishment’s lack of understanding of community clubs like Darlington.

“Their arbitrary decision has nothing to do with safety.

“This is a blow to fans but the club has come through far worse and we will get over this problem one way or another.”