DARLINGTON'S dreams of promotion from the fourth tier of English football came crashing down, ten years ago this week after a play-off penalty shoot out defeat to Rochdale.

The side threw away a two-goal advantage and with it a glorious chance of a first promotion since 1991, drawing 3-3 on aggregate and losing 5-4 on penalties after extra time.

The Northern Echo's Darlington FC reporter Craig Stoddart wrote: "Once Ben Muirhead scored the tie-clinching penalty, Darlington's promotion dreams died for another year, meaning next season they will be in League Two. Again.

"When there'll be yet more trips to the likes of Bury, Grimsby, Macclesfield and Lincoln et al. Again. It is a depressing thought."

In other news, more than 35,000 market traders were set to back The Northern Echo’s campaign to ban flammable children’s pyjamas.

The campaign was launched after a toddler from North Yorkshire suffered severe burns and permanent scarring when his pyjama bottoms caught fire.

A leader of the National Market Traders Federation (NMTF) vowed to fight to get sister organisations in countries across Europe to join calls for a change in EU law.

The toddler's clothes were set alight after an ember from the living room fire fell on his pyjamas.

The accident would not have happened if the EU had banned the use of flammable material in boys' pyjamas – a law that already applied to girls' nightdresses.

The boy's grandfather, Andrew Mitchard, from Dalton, North Yorkshire, said: "I am optimistic that we can get the law changed, but it won't happen without the backing of people with real clout.”

Meanwhile, MPs backed scientific research branded as “Frankenstein science” by the church in the hope of curing sufferers of diseases including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and cystic fibrosis.

They voted to allow the use of part-human, part-animal embryos for stem cell research to tackle a critical shortage of human eggs. The vote was passed by 336 to 176, a majority of 160.

The result came as a relief to Gordon Brown, who had personally urged MPs to back the measure in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, because it had the potential to improve "millions of lives".

And a banned motorist who denied getting behind the wheel was only caught because the accident he was in was filmed by a television crew.

The driver was 11 months into a three-year driving ban when he got behind the wheel of a 26-tonne cement mixer. When he was arrested in December for driving while disqualified, he told police they had the wrong man.

But magistrates were told that officers knew he was lying because the accident at Myton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire was filmed by a television crew who had been following the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service for Helicopter Heroes, a programme hosted by then-Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond.