Mark Forster was part of the team that won promotion from the old Fourth Division in 1985. He spoke to Ray Simpson for the "Darlo's on the Up" book (which is still available, by the way, in the club shop)

I spent the summer of 1984 playing for a club called Munkfors in Sweden, and I missed the start of the 1984-85 season. There was a story behind that.

Near the end of the 1983-84 season, the club was struggling financially. Brian Honour and I were called in to see Cyril, Brian first.

Cyril asked Brian if he wanted to play in Sweden. Brian said no because he was getting married in the summer, so Cyril released him! Brian came out, looking shocked, and told me what had happened.

So when I went in, Cyril asked me if I fancied playing in Sweden, so straight away, I said yes, and when do I go?

So I went to Sweden for a few months. I think it was just a way of getting me off the payroll to cut costs, even though I was only on about £50 per week.

It went well in Sweden, the club and I were happy with each other. In August, the Munkfors manager called me into his office because Cyril was on the phone. Apparently, there’d been some injuries and Cyril needed me back at Darlington earlier than planned. I could hear Cyril talking down the phone to the Munkfors manager, and Cyril asked if they could release me earlier than planned.

The Munkfors manager looked at me, and I shook my head, because I’d been enjoying myself there, and the Munkfors people were very nice. I didn’t really want to let them down.

The Munkfors manager understood, so he said no to Cyril, who shouted back down the phone. So I played the rest of the Swedish season and returned to England.

I walked into the dressing room when I returned to Feethams, and here was Willie Young, a Scottish international! I thought Cyril had been sacked, and somebody else had replaced him. I was just amazed to see a player of his stature in our dressing room. Cyril had brought him in on a month’s contract.

When I returned from Sweden, I scored twice against Colchester, and we beat Halifax 1-0. Cyril also signed Garry MacDonald from Carlisle, and with Carl Airey bought in the summer as well, the three of us scored quite a few goals. I finished second top scorer in all competitions that season, without starting many games as well because Cyril thought I had no pace.

My response to that was that like many other players who didn’t have pace, I could make up for it in other ways.

Once we had a few injuries though, and at the same time there was a flu outbreak. I received a phone call one day, to tell me that I had flu, and not to come to the ground. The game on the Saturday was postponed a couple of days beforehand, and the story was in the papers that several players had flu and I was one of them!

I went out on the Friday night to a local pub, and some of the customers said; “We thought you had flu!”

Cyril ruled by fear, and on a few occasions he wasn’t nice to us at all as a bunch of players. We lost a midweek game at Northampton, and the following day he ordered us in for training when it was supposed to be our day off.

He laid into us after training, and after he’d left the dressing room, we all said; “Sod him, let’s win promotion for ourselves.”

We had a great set of lads, and we all just seemed to click together.

The team had the attitude of “Sink or Swim” after the Paul McCartney record at the time. We used to sing the lyrics, especially the line “We all stand together”.

Maybe Cyril was like that because he’d seen how ruthless Graeme Souness was when they were at the Boro.

There was once though when we were all ready to burst out laughing, but didn’t dare. We lost 3-0 at Telford in the FA Cup, and after the game, he started shouting at us in the changing room. Then Telford started singing in their dressing room that famous Spurs song, “Nice One Cyril”, which Cyril heard, so he shouted even louder at us. So in turn, the song got louder from the home changing room.

I fell foul of Cyril after a home game. We ended up drawing 3-3 after being 3-1 up at one stage, but I hadn’t been involved. While he was blasting all the other players, I steadily got changed from my tracksuit into my everyday clothes, and when he’d finished he turned round to me and shouted; “Get your tracksuit back on, and go for a run!” I might have missed a word out there!

But on the other side of the coin, he was a generous man. When he won the manager of the month award, which came with a bottle of whisky because it was sponsored by Bell’s, he bought all the players a little whisky miniature, which was a great gesture.

When we all went to Magaluf after we’d won promotion, we kind of over-indulged ourselves and got thrown out of our hotel. Word had got back to the national papers in the UK – not as fast as it would nowadays though – and Cyril pulled us all together, told us not to say a word to anyone, and he would deal with everything. And he did, we heard no more about it.

Cyril was very good at organising. He made sure that the back four was solid and gave nothing away. Players like Phil Lloyd, Smudger, Peter Johnson, Graeme Aldred, Steve Senior were superb when they played. David McLean and Micky Angus were real grafters in midfield. We had a good solid base, so no wonder we were difficult to beat away from home.

David McLean was a real driving force, the inspiration behind the team. He was an old stager, and old pro. He was no good at washing his training kit though. We used to take our stuff home to be washed every day, but he would pull his out of his bag still muddy and wet from the previous day!

One of the highlights of my career at Darlington was obviously beating Middlesbrough in the FA Cup replay, but the second game got a bit naughty as we all know. I remember after our win at Feethams, I went back to my car and someone threw a missile at me. I know that Garry MacDonald was physically threatened.

We lost to Telford in the next round, which meant we missed out on a dream tie at Everton in the next round. Everton were probably the best team in the country then, and even now it still hurts that we could have been playing in front of 54,000 people. I think Cyril would have enjoyed that!

We weren’t as good as Chesterfield and Blackpool that season, but if we hadn’t made it hard for ourselves, then maybe we could have finished above them.

Cyril didn’t want to play in the Football League Trophy, so he didn’t mind us losing to Halifax at their place, and I think in some ways he maybe had mixed feelings when we turned it around by 7-0 in the next game.

He wasn’t too bothered at all about the away game at Lincoln, and everybody was pleased that we were out of it when we lost there. But then we discovered that we were still in the competition as one of the highest scoring teams, and we got a place in the quarter finals. When we lost to Bolton, we were definitely out!

The players and fans were very close, I think all of the players knew the regular fans. So we all had quite a celebration when we stopped at a service station on our way back from winning promotion with a point at Crewe in a 2-2 draw.

The place was quite full of Darlo fans, and as we walked in, everyone started singing and the fans patted the players on the back. It was brilliant. I was given a memento by a fan – I had it for years and years, and it really summed up the togetherness between us all. I’m still friendly now with a couple of Darlo fans from that time.