We asked where Darlo fans are located in the world, and Harry Lough, contacted us from Crete. He gave us an insight into watching Darlo in the fifties and sixties -- here's the second part of his story.

We were having a kick about one Saturday morning, when one of the lads shouted out that the" town" are at home  this afternoon, let's go!! Yeh sure, and how do we get in? We hardly had a penny between us. No problem, just  follow me shouted one of the older lads, so that was it ,I was going to my first game. Five of us set off walking,

through the allotments behind Dodmire school, down Smithfield Road, across South Park and up Polam Lane.

Half way up the lane when nobody was looking we jumped over the fence into the football field at Beechwood School. We then ran down to the bottom of the field and came to the wooden fence that ran behind the West Stand, two of the vertical planks had been loosened at the bottom, they could be pulled to either side, so when

the coast was clear, we were in.

About 5 years later I was a pupil at Beechwood school for one year before it closed,

it gave me the opportunity to make sure the "back door" was well maintained for any other kids who were skint.

No idea who we played that day, but from then on I was hooked, I hardly missed a game for the next 3 seasons. I  made that journey many a time on my own after that, I sometimes stayed back after the game and waited for the  players to come out of the changing rooms, in time Brian Henderson started to spot me, he would give me a  programme from the previous away game, if he had one. About 30 years later I owned a shop in Tow Law,  Hendo called in one day on his way back from Carlisle, his home town where he often made visits, we had a

canny "kraic" that day, he called in a few times after that. He could certainly put some crunching tackles in, I  was at the game when he broke his leg, I am not a certain about this, but I think Darlo's other fullback who I think was Whitehead was carried off with a broken leg in the same game.

My favourite players were Joe Rayment, right wing and a left winger Redfearn, nicknamed Cheyenne, that came  about from a cowboy series that was on the telly at the time, he was different in the fact that he was massive for a winger, they all tended to be like me in those days,5 foot nowt.

One of the best wingers Darlo ever had was George McGeachie, and they only got him really by default. He  was playing for a top team in Scotland, but he had trained as a scientist, he was offered a job at ICI on Teesside.

So he came down and worked for ICI and carried on playing football for Darlo, he was still good enough to play  at a higher standard, funny thing is, I think his first game was the 10 nil thrashing we got at Doncaster.

Another class player to arrive on the scene was Alan Sproates, what a player and loyal servant he turned out to be. He was signed from Swindon Town, we received him plus cash, a centre forward called Jim Lawton went  in the other direction. Jim Lawton was a great header of the ball, he was a few years older than me. When I was about 13 years I used to go to Tommy Crooks Park to watch Darlington Juniors. In one particular game they were playing a cup game against Cargo Fleet, or maybe South Bank, not sure. Anyway their centre forward was Jimmy Lawton. He ran riot that day, I think he scored about 5 headers. Three lads I can remember playing for  the Juniors that day were Dave Walton, Keith Clark and the goalie Eric Layton. In later years I played with Dave Walton and his brother Terry for Paton & Baldwins, sadly I believe Dave is no longer with us.