ON the door of the Oak Tree it said "Lounge", though "Lions' den" might have been more appropriate. Mr Luke Raine was Daniel, half Newton Aycliffe the lions. Since Luke wasn't alone, the setting might also have been compared with Shadrach, Meshach and Abhou-ben-Adam (or some similarly inflammable character) in the fiery furnace, but one biblical analogy per column must suffice. He was promised a hot reception, nonetheless.

Luke is the newly-styled Director of Football at Darlington FC. Previously he'd been a joiner, a dab hand with six- inch panel pins it's reckoned, and for 12 years had run Newton Aycliffe FC until, without winning anything, the club fell victim to the well-known sporting malady, apathetic newtownitis. The Wearside League was a different planet, he said.

Now, Tuesday evening, he was with team manager Gary Bennett and a couple of players at a meeting of the Newton Aycliffe branch of the supporters' club - the timing hardly auspicious, the knives well sharpened.

The Quakers had just eight points from the last 42 possible. High profile chairman George Reynolds had banned unaccompanied under 18s from the tin shed, Luke's own appointment had been received with vertiginous eyebrows and, perhaps worst of all, centre half Neil Aspin had that day signed for Hartlepool, the oldest enemy of all.

"I'm gutted," someone said, though "eviscerated" may more vividly have described his condition.

The problem, probably, was that George had promised them the earth. If only he'd just promised Europe. The club re-made from chipboard, some ever more greatly feared, might also have been built on sand.

Luke was to be eaten alive. There was therefore an appeal for calm and for civility, a reminder that women and children were present, a plea not to get personal. Despite it, the biggest of the lions scented blood the moment they opened the cage door.

"Can you tell us what qualifications you have to be Director of Football?" he snarled, evidence (were it needed) of the other biblical bit about a prophet not being without honour, save in his own country and among his own people.

"I work for George Reynolds and he's the chairman," said Luke, an answer so honest and so instantly disabling that it might have been delivered through a high velocity dart gun.

The joiner had come tooled up.

Thereafter the Director of Football played a blinder. He'd played the game but was "useless", was an ordinary working feller like they were, a Sunderland supporter through instinct and experience, knew as much about football as the next man and rather more than the chairman.

George, said his right-hand man, knew nothing about it at all, nothing of 4-4-2 or 3-3-4 or whether (there's a note of it here, honest) there were 17 men to a side. But he was still the man who put in £5m to save the club.

Had he been a consultant spin doctor, or a member of the Mandelson Institute of Public Relations, his performance could not more greatly have drawn hostile claws. The manager, perhaps emboldened, was engaging, too.

"I think the chairman has gone into the football club and hasn't realised what the football industry is all about," he said, adding - inarguably - that the players realised George was different.

Mind, added Gary, the chairman, was learning every day.

(Since the opiate term "play-offs" is no longer in Feethams currency, it should also be recorded that Bennett used the night's only four-letter word. Only a third division four-letter word, mind, one that the weenies would many times have heard before the watershed, one that Carlisle United were undoubtedly in, anyway.)

Still the candid camaraderie continued, with no suggestion - shamelessly to mix the animal metaphor - that Luke was simply Middle Sized Billy Goat Gruff, and that the trolls would in good time get their comeuppance from Great Big Billy Goat George.

He was the honest injun, without need of the big chief to fight his battles.

The squad, he said, was neither big enough nor good enough, the tin sheddecision had been "impulsive" and would be reviewed - "George digs the holes and Lukey has to fill them in again," someone muttered - there'd been no contingency plan for failing to gain promotion last season.

"We thought it was nailed on," said Luke, and probably with six-inch panel pins.

They wouldn't drop into the Conference, he added, they'd be as close to the top next season as they were now to the bottom, they'd learn from their mistakes.

"Gary has been hamstrung. He's had stick that's not down to him it's down to the board.

"We've messed it up as a board, we haven't been wise. If anyone deserves an apology, it's Gary. We realise we are going to have go back to the drawing board and come up with a policy that will help the football team to succeed.

"Obviously people here think we've cocked it up big style."

Hadn't the chairman made too many rash decisions, asked a fan. "I hope I make as many in my life and finish up as wealthy," said Luke.

There were questions about the stewards, too. The only reason, in truth, that journalists are second bottom of the list of least respected professions (and lawyers bottom) is that the mafia in fluroescent orange jackets aren't included on the questionnaire.

Luke said he'd had lots of letters. "These guys are coming in for beer money and probably it's the only money they can earn.

"What I'm saying is that it's not a highly-paid job and you don't have to be intellectual to do it. Some of these lads don't think on their feet."

What training did they have in de-escalation techniques, someone asked, self-servingly. "I've no idea," said Luke.

There'd also be money this season to buy new players, he said, then corrected himself - "I lie" -- and said there'd be money to pay them "suitably according to their qualifications." Bennett's job, "a promise", was safe.

It lasted 75 minutes. Afterwards, honour restored, he had a beer at the back with some fellow countrymen whilst supporters talked, once again, of supporting ever more.

Lions 0 Daniel 1