Home News Columnists Neil Farrington

Grim story at Quakers

Dec 2 2007 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

THEIRS was the only North East result last Saturday which belied our decision to rename our Hotbed football pull-out, Deathbed.

But the attendance for Darling- ton’s win over Wycombe told its own grim story.

Barely more than 3000 – and by “barely”, I mean two – turned up to see a victory which lifted the Quakers to second in League Two.

Granted, Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough were all playing – Newcastle and Boro at home.

But a club unbeaten at home in the league all season, in a town of 98,000 people, still deserves a better show.

Hotbed? I know our Premier League teams are lending the lie to that phrase on the pitch, but can North East fans claim to be unrivalled fanatics when a team like Darlington are playing to almost-empty houses?

Not that the Quakers’ problems were all about fans being wooed by their bigger neighbours up the road.

None of our Big Three were playing the night they beat Shrewsbury last month in front of a record-low crowd at their four-year-old home.

But did none of Boro’s several thousand stayaways not fancy a short trip across the A66 to watch a team on the up eight days ago?

As reader David Bruce, a concerned Darlington fan, put it to me last week: “They might find they actually enjoy going to a match for a change!”

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