Lifelong Darlington fan Paul Hodgson has kindly given us permission to reproduce his book "When Push comes to Shove" on the official website.

Here's the latest chapter, which covers May 1999 and was written nearly 20 years ago.

Our first match of May was at home to Chester City.  For this game, I met Mike and Ian in the Hole in the Wall in the town centre. Ian was convinced that Mike Peden had gone and that George Reynolds was going to take the club over.  We all hoped that he would, as the club was now in dire financial straits with the players still not receiving their wages.

    After a few pints, we headed for Feethams. Outside the Centre Spot, we saw George Reynold’s Rolls Royce which was being guarded by a man wearing a brown camelhair coat.

    Inside the bar everyone was buzzing about the imminent takeover.  Rumour had it that this would happen within the next week or so.

    I went in the disabled area with Mike and to our surprise, the Darlo fans started singing, “There’s only one Georgie Reynolds” as he took his seat in the Directors’ Box. Interestingly, Mike Peden was conspicuous by his absence.

     Unfortunately, Darlo’s display didn’t match the mood of the crowd and they produced by far their worst performance of the season, eventually losing 2-1 to what can only be described as a poor Chester City side with Glenn Naylor scoring the Quakers' only goal. Former Darlo captain Andy Crosby, who played in the 1996 Play-Off Final against Plymouth Argyle, was in the Chester City team and hit the post from six yards out.

    Mike and I both agreed the potential owner Mr Reynolds wouldn’t have been impressed by the standard of football played.

     The following Tuesday Exeter City were the visitors to Feethams. Because of the rumours circulating that an important announcement was going to be made, Ian, Mike and I made our way straight to the ground at around half past six.  In the Centre Spot we spoke to Roger Martin who said that he’d heard that George Reynolds would be taking over the club and that this would be confirmed tonight.

    Ian was with me in the disabled area when Mr Reynolds strode onto the pitch, accompanied by his wife Susan, both holding Darlington scarves aloft much to the delight of the Tin Shed faithful.

    Using a microphone, he stated that he would pay off the club’s debts of almost four million pounds.  He added that his take-over would be sealed by midday the following Wednesday. “The deal is on” he said. He also vowed to pay monies owed to backroom staff and players totalling £90,000 and also promised to invest in new players and build a new stadium with a 25,000 capacity.  “I know there will be some Doubting Thomases, but I promise you I will deliver the goods for Darlington.”

    Darlington actually played really well, especially in the second half, but no one was watching the game – it was something neither Ian nor I had witnessed in all the years we had watched football together.

    We won 4-0 with goals from Gary Bennett and a hat-trick from Marco Gabbiadini, who became the first player to score a league hat-trick at Feethams in ten years.  The last person to do this had been Gary Worthington against Scunthorpe United.

    Ian said that Mr Reynolds had now seen two sides of Darlington in just three days, the worst performance and the best.

    In the bar afterwards, everyone was talking about gaining promotion the following season. I decided to wait and see. After all, I’d seen plenty of chairmen come and go in my time.

    We later read that Mike Peden had severed all his links with the club. In fact, he wasn’t even involved in the negotiations with potential buyer George Reynolds, since Executive Director Bernard Lowery had conducted them on his behalf.

     This represented an ignominious end for the Midlands based entrepreneur who had vowed to lead the club to bigger and better things when he took over in 1997.   The building of the new East Stand which was supposed to be a symbol of the club’s bright new future had instead become a financial millstone around its neck.

   The final match of the season was away to Scunthorpe United, who are generally our bogey team.

 Mike and I caught the half past ten train to Doncaster and had to sit in the First Class carriage because the disabled place was already taken. Two very haughty women sitting opposite us were talking about Ascot and Henley, but these were not venues that we were overly familiar with, so we ignored their conversation! During the journey, the assistant offered us some complimentary shortbread finger biscuits, tea and coffee, which we both declined.

As Mike and I mulled over the events of the previous Tuesday, it became clear that we were both dubious about George Reynolds’ motives. After all, I had been correct all along about Mike Peden regarding the sale of Jason De Vos and the unpaid Hartlepool gate money. However, I hoped that we would be wrong and that George Reynolds really did have the club’s best interests at heart.

 When we arrived at Scunthorpe, we hailed a taxi from the station to the Berkeley pub near the ground. Inside, we were dismayed to discover that they had no decent bottled lager, and so we were forced to drink some awful Lowenbrau instead.

On arrival at Glandford Park, Mike pointed out that it in his opinion it had been built on the cheap and hoped that our new ground, if it ever came to fruition, would be of a much better standard instead of this breezeblock and corrugated iron monstrosity, which resembled nothing more than a cattle market.

 Upon entering the ground, we had difficulty in getting a programme because they were waiting for fresh supplies to be delivered. Luckily, after a wait of ten or so minutes, we were each able to purchase one from a girl carrying at least a hundred in a cardboard box.

All in all, it was a drab game, enlivened only by another Marco Gabbiadini wonder goal – his twenty-fourth of the season. Apart from the goal, the most entertaining elements were the chants of the Darlington faithful: “We’re not poor anymore” and “We’re so rich it's unbelievable” being the most notable of them.

 After the game, we waited near the Iron Bar and were picked up by a taxi that we had pre-booked. We then went for a celebratory drink in a pub near the station. Earl Gray, Andy and Roger Martin were all there. Amusingly, Mike pointed out that Brian’s shoelaces were still trailing along the floor just like they had at the Carlisle match!

Because of the layout of the station, Mike had to push me across the tracks so that we could reach the other platform for the train to Doncaster. As we waited there, Chris Hardy was on his mobile phone shouting out the score from the Carlisle game and we learned that on-loan goalkeeper Jimmy Glass had kept them in the league with a last minute goal, thus condemning Scarborough to the Conference.

At Doncaster Mike pushed me along a subway where we noticed a beggar sitting on the floor. Being in a generous mood, I made Mike give him 50p out of his own pocket, which he grudgingly did! As we were quite hungry by this time, we decided to have a bite to eat in Burger King. Whilst we were sitting in the restaurant, I bought a local sports paper from a newspaper seller. Giving him a pound coin I told him to keep the change as he had the look of the tramp in the subway earlier. Mike and I were therefore even in the charity stakes!

We then headed again to one of our favourite pubs, the Tut n Shive. It’s quite an unusual place with a stone-flagged floor with beer barrels on display, and seems to have pretty much of a 1960s feel to it with its Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead and Woodstock posters on the walls.

  After a few beers we returned to the station and caught the train to York. On arrival, we got talking to a Sheffield Wednesday fan who asked if he could borrow my “Green un” sports paper as he called it, so I gladly let him have it, for which he seemed very grateful, as he walked away from us glued to the Wednesday match report.

We then learned that, due to technical difficulties, the train would not be stopping at Darlington. I could tell that Mike wasn’t very happy at the prospect of the added expense of catching a taxi from York to Darlington so I told him to just “Go with the flow.”

Fortunately, a GNER official came over to us and said that he would sort out a cab for us, which he did. We went outside the station with our slip of paper allowing us to catch a black cab from the rank free of charge, with GNER picking up the tab. This would normally have cost between £50-60. Hardly surprising, then, that the cabbies were squabbling amongst themselves over who would take us to Darlington!

The two of us were dropped off at my flat about an hour after leaving York. Mike then booked a local taxi to take him home.

Darlington finished in a respectable eleventh place in the table with sixty-five points, only six points behind a play-off place. It had certainly been an interesting experience being a fan of the club that season and I was already looking forward to the new one.

Prior to the Scunthorpe game, The Northern Echo quoted George Reynolds as saying that “He wouldn’t be spending another penny on Feethams.” However, we later discovered that he had changed his mind and that during that summer he would be getting the pitch relaid so that we would have a good playing surface for the forthcoming season. Jokingly, in reference to the potholed surface, he was quoted as saying, “If we played Manchester United on that field, then we’d win, because our players know where the holes are.”

Although Mike and I had originally intended to end our book at this point, to do so would have been madness. Given what had happened, we both felt compelled to continue our story to embrace the following season. It seemed that the club was on the verge of something very special and we wanted to document what the future would bring. Roll on the next season of the Reynolds revolution, we thought!