Fond farewell to Feethams led by Tin Shed's jungle king

He's too exhausted even to beat his chest when a couple of passers-by accuse him of being Hartlepool's monkey.

"It's pretty emotional to say goodbye to the ground after all these years," he puffs. "I've been coming down for about 25 years and I've seen more bad times than good."

He pauses to wipe the sweat from his eyes - or was it a tear?

"But even the bad times have been brilliant."

The gorilla's love affair with Feethams started when his father brought him along - and for most of the 5,723 in the crowd this was a family farewell.

Father is with son; grandfather with grandson. Before kick-off, Michael Cooke, 33, is standing at the top of the Polam End waiting for his father Alan, 55, to arrive. Michael's trying to fill in his nine-year-old son Daniel on the careers of the famous former players who are being given a final twirl on the Feethams pitch.

There are more than 50 of them on parade, all creaking joints and aching limbs - they gave the best years to Feethams of their careers and lives, not to mention their cartilages and ligaments.

There's Ronnie Hartbertson, who scored in the club's most famous win against Chelsea in the 1958 FA Cup. There's Gary Coatsworth, who scored the goal against Welling that won promotion from the Conference in 1990.

There's Harry Clarke, at 82 the oldest surviving Darlington player and the only man ever to be a Feethams pro at both football and cricket. He's followed by Harry Clark, 70.

"D'you remember, Harry, our first game together was for the reserves against Workington," says Harry.

"Ay," says Harry. "The referee looked at the teamsheet and said 'two Harry Clarks', and I said 'he's me eldest lad. It's his first game'."

"Harry was brilliant," says Harry. "If he were playing now he'd be worth millions."

Harry senior purrs with delight: "Millions, millions - plural, plural."

Michael Cooke in the Polam End doesn't go as far back as the Clarks.

"My dad started bringing me down when I was about seven, and I remember Ron Ferguson scoring in the Cup in 1976 against Sheffield Wednesday from out wide on the half-way line," he says. "It went smack into the net." His dad, Alan, goes further back. "Bobby Cummings was only a little fellow but boy could he head a ball," he says. "I was in the Tin Shed end and he must have been six inches smaller than the centre half, and I've never seen a little fellow head the ball like that. It was 1966, the season we were promoted."

Father and son started off on the Polam Lane side of the ground.

"We made that our home all the way through," says Michael, nodding towards where the burger van now stands.

They switched from one end to the other depending on the direction Darlington were kicking.

"We used to follow the goals," says Alan. The pair look at one another and laugh.

Mabel Neil, 81, has been sitting at the front of the East Stand for 56 years from where she has been able to "tantalise" generations of linesmen. Her son David, 60, helped build the Tin Shed - "I mixed the concrete and moved the barrows" - and for the last 17 years, Mabel has been doing her grandchildren's pocket money job: selling the programmes.

On Saturday she's able to take her seat early. The huge pile of used tenners in the corner of her shed shows that all 2,000 of the £5 souvenir programme have been sold by five past two; usually by five past three, they've only off-loaded 400.

Some in the crowd have only come to buy the souvenirs and be a part of history. The game kicks off in silence as so many are there to see the stadium and not the side. After five minutes a thoroughly bored woman leaning on the barrier in the Polam End asks her husband: "Who's who?"

Rather embarrassed, he discretely whispers back: "Darlo are coming this way. They're in white and black."

Soon, though, no one's paying much attention at all to the last game at Feethams in 120 years. A group of fans are democratically voting on who should be in the Top Ten People Who Should Really Have A Slap And Would Know That They Have Been Slapped And Are Not As Stupid As George W Bush Who Wouldn't Realise Even If He Had Been Slapped.

"What else do Darlo fans do when they're 2-0 down after 30 minutes and have had four pints before kick-off?" asks one. Prince Edward is top of their pops, followed by Robert Mugabe, Robbie Williams, Jamie Oliver, Eddie Irvine, Catherine Zeta Jones and Eifion Williams - "he plays for Hartlepool and sounds Welsh".

Nearby is Don Eccles, 67. "I can remember coming down with my grandfather when I was ten and we used to sit in the East Stand," he says. "It was wooden, and you could see through the slats in the floor at all the rubbish piling up - which ultimately did for it as it burnt down.

"It used to have two tunnel entrances and people around them had to stand up to see, and I remember my grandfather used shout at them 'get yerself saddown'."

Don's son Mark, 40, is alongside. "He first brought me down in 1976," says Mark. "We had a player called Jimmy Seal, and he played like a seal."

"Now it's all changed," says Don. "Mark's the one who brings me down."

Darlo do at least have the decency to perk up a little. They pull one back before half-time, equalise in the 76th minute and fluff their chances to give the grand old Victorian ground a victorious send-off.

"At least we didn't concede a goal in the time added on for injury to the referee," says a fan on the final whistle, before he leaps the hoardings and races onto the pitch.

It is an invasion that spans the generations. Father and son, grandfather and grandson stand in the goals for photographs. Some dig up pieces of grass and stuff them into their pockets; one fan secretly shows the number he's levered off his seat; many grab large lumps of concrete from the Tin Shed.

"I have been coming here since I was five and I am 46 next month, and I'm just speechless," says John "Wishbone" Parker from the Tin Shed.

Views are mixed about the new ground. "Coming out of those toilets, I knew how Terry Waite must have felt - and I was only in there two minutes," comments one fan on the primitive facilities.

"When you think that Darlington have played here for more than 100 years, then it is a bit sad," says David Wilkinson, 19. "But we are moving forward. We are progressing."

The gorilla, the last 'man' out, disagrees. He looks back between the twin towers. He looks back at the curve of the cricket pitch around which generations of Darlingtonians have walked on their way to the football. He looks back through the gates, through which his father and his grandfather walked, at the unique huddle of Feethams that is crammed in beside the Skerne: the garden sheds, the echoing tin sheets, the uneven concrete terraces, the steep main stand and the nostalgic wooden away end.

"I would rather stay where we are because it's got a bit of character," says the gorilla. "So I thought I would dress up and make it a day to remember. I've been photographed by half the ground.

"The game itself wasn't a classic to see the ground off but I suppose the occasion was more important."

He stops and wipes another trickle of sweat from his eyes - or are those tears running down behind his gorilla mask?