AN earthmover rolls slowly across the grass. Almost sorrowfully, it holds out its long arm. In its bucket, it tenderly cradles the lifeless remains of a crush barrier, the barrier's black legs hanging limply over the sides.

When human, this is a television news scene: a wailing father carrying the body of his child out of the wreckage of a tsunami or an earthquake, the poor thing's legs spilling heart-breakingly over his arms.

This isn't human. This is just the death of Feethams.

The earthmover unceremoniously drops the barrier onto a pile of debris in the goalmouth. It lands on top of a discarded sponsors' sign proclaiming: "Local, helpful and friendly".

The earthmover returns to the Polam Lane End where its caterpillar'd friend has climbed the stand. Its arm stretches higher and higher, and its grasping bucket rips out more barriers and turns concrete into reinforced rubble.

For 120 years, Feethams was the home of Darlington Football Club. It's hard to tell now. The top of the main stand once proudly carried the name of the team, of the place, that the fans sung that they'd be until they died. Now there's just a T left. All the other letters have tumbled down.

The wrecked stands crowd around a pitch where gorse bushes are already waist-high and ash saplings have sprung up taller than Peter Crouch. The only thing playing on the grass is a JCB. In the right-back area, it skilfully tackles a large polythene tunnel blowing on the snow-wind. It picks it up and, in a single, deft movement, wraps it around a stake so that it blows no more.

"It's so sad," says one of the workmen, his fluorescent jacket glowing in the dark of the day.

"I first came down here in 1963 to see Darlington play Torquay. With my dad, and I sat on his shoulders."

He dredges names from memorybanks he hasn't touched for decades. "Tony Moor would have been in goal... John Peverell at right-back... Brian Henderson at left-back... Ron Greener, of course, in the centre... Les O'Neill - although it might just have been before his time... and a guy called Brian Conlon up front."

The wind snatches his words and mixes them with the roar of destruction: the relentless surge of the engines and the high-pitched bleeps of their reversing warning.

These are just personal memories (with a couple of dates mixed up). Collective memories are held here as well.

Here, back in the 1880s, the fastest man in the country, Arthur "Darkie" Wharton, played in goal, swinging from the crossbar and catching the ball between his knees.

Here, during Darlington's greatest FA Cup run, the crowd was so big for the 1911 Bradford Park Avenue game that people shinned up telegraph poles and climbed onto roofs. The Polam residents threw buckets of water over them to get them off.

Here in 1958, mighty Chelsea were humbled 4-1; here in 1960, 21,023 - a Feethams record - crowded in to see the tie with Bolton Wanderers.

Now the snow-wind blows through the empty windows of the executive boxes. The only warmth is the orange glow of the oxy-acetylene torch cutting down the legs of the burnt-out West Stand.

The most chilling thought of all is that the demolition of the ground - which is an ideal size for a provincial Third Division club - started in the week in which rumours were confirmed that the club's current owners wanted out because of the egotistical enormity of the new 25,000 seater stadium.

Having said farewell to Feethams, I take the curved walk along the Skerne following in the footsteps of generations of Darlingtonians, and shake my head at the sadness and at the madness of it all.

Published: 04/03/2006