Journalist In Training

Relegation dog-fight

Relegation nerves start to show as Magpies fly up the league.

A last gasp winner at St James Park sent the home fans into a state of delirium as their victory was assured.    The 93^rd minute strike from the Magpies talisman was the 3^rd 90^th minute winner in the last four league home games.    The news that arch rivals Sunderland had lost to Chelsea after having taken a lead towards the end of the second half.   The Stadium of Light has seen a turbulent few weeks and last Saturday sacked the widely respected Martin O Neil just 4 hours after a 1-0 defeat against lead leaders Manchester United.     Nevertheless if the sacking of O Neil was seen as a controversial decision it was nothing to appointment of Paulo Di Canio with just seven Premier League games remaining.     

The Mackems need only look five miles north for evidence to see that bringing in a new manager at the back-end of a season does not always work.   Paulo Di Canios political leanings caused immediate controversy and a political storm descended upon Wearside when former foreign secretary David Miliband resigned from Sunderland due to Paulo Di Canios  “past political beliefs”.   If there is any consolation for Sunderland at the end of this weekend it is that things could have been even worse.   Had QPR had been beaten by Wigan at Loftus Road the Di Canio’s side would have found themselves   in the bottom three going into the Tyne-Wear Derby at St James on Sunday.      

For the other teams in the relegation dogfight the contrast in emotions was greatest expressed at the Britannia Stadium after Stokes defeat at home to fellow strugglers Aston Villa. The West Midland side are in a rich vein of form at exactly the right time.  Three victories out of the last four have seen them escape from the relegation zone.   The potters on the other hand have been descending since the start of the year with just five points from a possible thirty-six.   It is little wonder that the Britannia is no longer considered the demanding away fixture of yesteryear the loudest ground in the premier league resembles more of a play-pen for travelling sides than Lions den that it once was.    

There is a chance that Stoke could be dragged into the quagmire if their shocking form does not improve soon.  Stoke still have Manchester United   to play and the Red Devils could win the title there if they beat the home side and beat Manchester City.  Such an event would only rub salt into their wounds.    

However, for two managers this weekend who’s sides have been drinking in the last bar saloon for too long have just seen last orders called.   For QPR their travails are all the more shocking given how much they have spent.  For Remy and Samba alone the total spend is close to £80m when wages are considered.   Yet despite this QPR lie in 19^th position although they must have thought they had a lifeline but Shaun Maloney’s free-kick in the 94^th minute denied the 10-man Super Hoops Rangers at the death.   Nigel Adkins must have had revenge on his mind when his Reading side played his former team Southampton.   However, this was not to be the case and the man who guided Southampton to two successive promotions saw his new Reading team who find themselves at the very bottom of the top flight.     

Wonga post

The Wonga sponsorship deal is Milibands opportunity to show what responsible capitalism means. 

The Wonga sponsorship deal with Newcastle united has caused widespread anger and revulsion in the UK.  Politicians, football fans, and senior figures within football have been lining up to attack the deal.  Ian Lavery MP for Wansbeck and leader of the N.U.M is a season ticket holder at St James Park.  In parliament today he said on the matter “A city like Newcastle and the region should not have any ties to an organization like Wonga”.

Now the conservatives have been keen to lambast Ed Miliband as the puppet of unions and if Ed Milliband were to agree with this view he would be attacked by the right wing press.    

However, the reality is that Wonga is not the black sheep of sponsors amongst otherwise angelic sponsors amongst British football. Wonga themselves are the main partners of Hearts of Midlothian who’s stadium  is in the impoverished Gorgie area of Edinburgh and also have deals with Blackpool recently revealed as  being the 9^th poorest area in the UK . To list but a few controversial sponsors, Middlesbrough is sponsored by Ramsdens; the pawnbrokers,  Aston Villa and Swansea are sponsored by Casino companies, Bolton, Wigan and Wolves are sponsored by online bookmakers. Then there is the Birmingham owners who are currently under arrest for house arrest.  Even the sponsors of Sunderland Invest in Africa are little more than a front for Tullow oil whose corporate practice is questionable to say the least.    That’s not even including the Capital one cup, a credit card company who offer rates of 34.9%. Just to put that into perspective that would be illegal in France and Germany who cap their interest levels at 21.3% and 16% respectively.

Ed Miliband has talked about responsible capitalism and One Nation Britain. Today he stated that One Nation Britain is a Britain where everyone has an opportunity.

  If this dream is to become a reality he must regulate if not ban these legal loan sharks. He could start by supporting the football fans federation campaign to ban pay-day loan companies.   This is already the situation in the Football league and Stella Creasy the MP for Walthamsow has been campaigning on the issue for the last two years.  Miliband has shown that he can be leader to unite labour and as Tim Montgomerie stated “The left wing is uniting whilst the right wing is dividing”.   The 1922 Committee are becoming disillusioned with what Cameron’s apparent compassionate Conservatism.    There is no doubt that the Labour party is undergoing big change but for the first time it is not unfeesbale to imagine “Red Ed” as prime minister at the end of the next election

Kat Copeland

Kat Copeland article  

On August the 4^th 2012 it is fair to say that Kat Copeland’s life changed for ever. Not only did she win a gold medal along with her partner Sophie Hosking in her first ever Olympics,. With that wide eyed hug and her statement of “We’re going to be on a stamp”, she cemented her place in the hearts of the British public.  

Kat was in a café in London with friends having been to a talk at Oxford Academy when she called me on my mobile to start the interview.  

How has your life changed since winning the gold medal?    

“It’s very busy; I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and stuff. I haven’t really had time to relax but I don’t know what I’ve been doing. It doesn’t really feel like it’s sunk in because I’ve been talking about it in interviews but I haven’t really had time to internalize it”.

After you finished 1^st in the trials on the 11^th of March (senior squad single Sculls) did you start to think that you could win a medal?

“No I didn’t even dare let myself think that I could get in the boat. I’d done well in the singles but we still had to do crew boat testing at Cavesham which is our main centre, where we race in doubles and different combinations so if I had been beaten in that I still might not have got in the boat. Me and Sophie had been strong in singles but we hadn’t really raced before. We had a meeting when we went on our first training camp, because we just went straight into training.  Some boats have been together for three or four years, we got only got together in March. We had a meeting and we said what we wanted to do and we both said we wanted to win and I really believed we could. I maybe doubted it a bit in the World cup when we came 4^th and 5^th and I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working, and then we started doing lots of training on campus and talked to the psychologist a lot. Then we went straight on to the games”.

 

At the Great North Run was it more of an inspiration to you meeting fellow athletes like Ellie Simmonds, Nicola Adams and Mo Farah or the thousands of runners?

“I think meeting Ellie Simmonds was a highlight for me because she is the nicest, nicest girl, and you would not believe that she is only 17, she is so mature. She just seems so much older than her years and I thought she was really inspirational because of how she deals with all the attention. I thought the runners were amazing Like, there was the guy running with a fridge on his back;  [JE: Yeah, Tony the fridge] Yeah he’d done it like 30 times hadn’t he like he ran it every day I don’t know how he does that. They are inspirational because they do it for very selfless reasons, they do it for charity. I think its inspirational watching people win the Olympics but it’s very selfish we don’t it for a charity we do it because we want to win”. 

 

It’s been under a lot of media spotlight that 19 out 47 membersof the GB rowing squad are from private schools. Do you think there is any way that the sport can become more accessible?

“To be honest I would have thought that the numbers would have been more than that. I am not going to lie, in the past it used it to be a sport completely for those from private schools and the rich. Things like World Class Start. What they basically do is set out what the ideal Olympian would be so, tall, strong, a certain body shape a certain body type. They go into state schools, athletics clubs and other sports clubs and I think that things like that make it much more accessible. You don’t really hear about rowing a lot, I didn’t really hear about it, it’s not really on television a lot so you might not know about unless you do it at school. Money isn’t necessarily an issue, if you’re good enough you will get all the help you need. Loads of people at my rowing are just normal Stockton people, they’re not loaded”.  

 

Do you think that the people of Teesside will see any positive legacy from the Olympics despite the fact they were held in London?

“I’ve tried really hard to go into schools and to make it clear that people know that I’m from Teesside. I don’t know about other sports but for rowing people think that you have to go down south to do rowing; I thought that so I moved down south for a year. Then I realized that we have some of the best coaching in the country and one of the nicest rivers as well.”

 

Do you think that the Paralympics will improve the lives of disabled people in the UK?

“I hope that it will, maybe I have a bit of a biased view because I’m very involved in sport maybe I’m in a bit of a bubble. One the things I’ve noticed and it’s hard to say because I don’t know if it’s because I was involved in the Olympics and Paralympics, butI think that this Paralympics there has been so much more interest in it, it’s been taken more seriously and given much more attention and its basically been the equivalent if not talked about more than the actual Olympics. You’ve got people like Ellie, Oscar Pistorious, Jonny Peacock, who can be a real inspiration to disabled children; it creates a big knock on effect.”  

Why do you think that Team GB did so well in both the Olympics and the Paralympics?

“The year before I read an article which said, now I don’t know the specific figures but any host nation gets an increase in funding in the run-up to the Olympics. It’s the little advantage of being able to do one more training session. I think the home advantage was a big help, having the majority of the crowd cheering for you is amazing. It’s not pressure, at all they’re not going to shoot you or mob you if you do badly.” 

What do you think that the Olympics have done for women’s sport?

 “Every Olympics, there’s more and more girl role models. I would say the girls got more attention than the boys.  You’ve got people like Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott, all of these girls and I think they’re all brilliant role models because they handle themselves so well. I think because it’s from a range of sports, like Nicola Adams in the boxing and then people in the show jumping, people from lots of different sports and different body sizes’ there’s something for everyone to look up to. I really hope that the legacy is a general rise in participation and I think that people realize what can be achieved, not just athletes the coaches, the teachers and all those people as well”.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

         “I am the most indecisive person in the world I don’t know what I’ll be doing in a week never mind five years. But I’m playing with the idea of going to Rio”

 

Darren Grey article

As Europe and the US prepare to do battle in the Ryder Cup, some of the world’s leading golfers would do well to match the record of a player from the region, who starred in a recent disabled tournament. Jack Elliot (CORR) reports [SF ENDS]

ONE-ARMED golfer Darren Grey, from Darlington, played a crucial part in Europe’s victory over the US in the Fightmaster Cup, seen as a disabled equivalent to the Ryder Cup.

Held in Chicago last weekend, just down the road from the Medinah Country Club, which is hosting the professional event, the Fightmaster event saw Europe triumph by 20.5 points to 7.5.

Grey, was delighted about the role he played in the tournament, winning 4.5 points for his team.

He said: “I was thrilled to bits been part of such a great team and the experience was amazing.”

The 27-year-old is a familiar figure in disabled golf and was disappointed to see the sport miss out on the roster of events for the 2016 Paralympic Games.

He said: “I hope that golf will become a Paralympics sport and hope to be selected in squads.

“I still am a bit gutted that golf didn’t make 2016 but hope that the hard work continues with the disabled golf world to make this possible.”

The Fightmaster Cup, also 12-a-side, follows the same formula as the Ryder Cup except that it is for one-armed players.

Grey, the former world one-armed champion has dropped only one and a half points over the three stagings of the tournament.

Every two years this version of the world’s most televised golf tournament is contested between Europe and North America, and in the same vicinity as the real Ryder Cup.

It is named after an American, Don Fightmaster, now in his 80s but once described by Time magazine as “the Arnold Palmer of one-armed golf”.

Grey is an ambassador for Durham county golf partnership and of this year’s Golf North show. This year the event is being held at Middlesbrough FC from October 19 to October 21 and will coach disabled youngsters.

He added: “Being an ambassador of the Golf North show feels like a great honour and the event is looking very impressive and I’m sure all the hard work will open more opportunity for people to get involved in sport.

“Some people who have disabilities might think golf is not for them. But I know how changes in coaching methods, new forms of golf and new technology can give them a lot of fun.”

:: To book tickets for the Golf North Show, which include a free round at Ryton Golf Club, visit golf-north.co

Losing Tees rowing club would be the opposite of the Olympic spirit.

Just because posh people happen to row doesn’t mean it is elitist funding the sport. The Northern Echo has reported that Tees Rowing club could be closing down due to a lack of funding. The tragic irony of this is that the only reason that there is a lack of funding at the rowing club which trained Katherine Copeland from being in her words to John Inverdale “rubbish” to an Olympic gold medallist and one of the poster girls of British sport. However, judging from the all be it small selection of comments on the Northern Echo website there is not a lot of support for the idea. Take the comment by our open minded friend doonhammer who has clearly taken a long hard look at rowing and enlightened us with his view that rowers are “La de dad gits swanning around in their canoes”. Thank-you for that you are obviously an expert in the history of rowing so I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you that the rowing club of Helen glover Minerva Bath was instrumental in the suffragettes movement as it was the first female rowing club in Britain. However, he’s probably against that as well after all the first female MP was a Liberal and therefore probably to elitist for his tastes. Nevertheless to suggest that we shouldn’t fund it just because it is predominantly a sport for those of private education is the type of class ignorance that puts people off left wing politics in the UK. What about the 160 people who have joined up Tees rowing club are they all “lah de dag gits”? Chances are there probably not. Then we have the ridiculous view of Martin freeman who of course is endorsed by the equally ridiculous George Galloway. He believes that Rowing, equestrianism and fencing should be banned. His reasons for this are set out in his book Why the Olympics aren’t good for us and how they could be? Rowing, equestrianism and fencing are sports which apparently those from poor countries don’t have the facilities to do. Ok I’ll put this to him what about the rower from Niger Hammoudo Issaka? He became one of the heroes of the Olympic games. He began rowing just three months before the Olympics and finished 1 minute and thirty-nine seconds behind the winner Mindaugs Griskonis of Lithuania. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/19036792 In fencing we were provided with a moment of controversy in the men’s semi-final when the South Koren Shim a lim staged a sit in after it looked as though she had defeated German Britta Heideman only for the clock to be reset and for Heideman to defeat her with one second left 6-5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19054443 Whether a sport is elitist or not the benefits of sporting success affect those from Chipping Norton, to Chapeltown, from Fulham to Failsworth and other areas of the UK. If the money from the Olympic legacy fund does go to Tees Rowing club it will be more than the lah de dah’s that benefit.

Lance Armstrong article

Just when Cycling should be basking in glory it is hiding in shame.  

Cycling should be on the front pages because of its rising popularity.  The 2012 Olympics has given it a new rock n roll status certainly in the U.K.  

There is a big possibility that for the second year in row the winner of Sport’s Personality of the year could be a cyclist. 

 Britain won seven out of the ten track cycling golds.   Yet this is not what the papers of Britain or for that matter the world are filled with.   In sporting terms this is far bigger than the hurricane which is heading towards the Republican convention centre.    

Today Lance Armstrong seven times tour de France winner just stopped fighting.   Here is a man who was given 6 months to live when he was fighting testicular cancer.   He then went onto win seven tour de France’s  who’s  Livestrong bracelets did a lot to raise the profile of testicular cancer.  

After thirteen years the man just couldn’t take it anymore despite taking over 512 drugs test’s and with the exception of one in 1999 which was reportedly swept under the carpet has not tested positive.  It was 2004 when the book L.A Confidential was published by Pierre Ballistar and David Walsh that shone the negative spotlight firmly on Lance Armstrong. 

Amongst it included confessions from Armstrongs former masseuse that he asked her to put extra make up on to hid the needle marks.  Despite this when parts of the book were serialised by the Sunday Times they were taken to court by Armstrong who successfully sued for Libel.   

 However, despite this it was not until my 19^th Birthday that the U.S federal investigators officially dropped the investigation  with no criminal charges. 

Despite this the head of the anti-doping society has accused the cyclist of “taking performance enhancing drugs,   abusing the system and using EPO and drug transfusions to get around the system.  Up to ten of his teammates confessed to see him taking performance enhancing drugs including Travis G Jarret who claims to have seen him injecting syringes into his arm and then putting them back into the fridge.  Now considering this man and several others who have testified against him are drugs cheats puts the legitimacy of this into doubt. 

There are two different viewpoints to take.  Katherine Copeland Olympic Gold Medalist in the women’s lightweight skulls who I know personally as a very nice person who ran an after school arts club for Autistic Children tweeted, @kate_copeland  Leave LA alone What does he have to do, the poor guy! Why take drug’s cheats words against 100,00s of negative drugs tests! It’s crazy.   

Piers Morgan however, tweeted this @piersmorgan” Anyone who thinks that Lance Armstrong would quit his doping defence if he wasn’t guilty is living on cloud cuckoo land”.    In the words of Billy Bragg  “Which Side are you on”?  

Olympics blog

Hello,  I went to South Africa  and I wrote a few articles and took along a dictophone but the dictophone didn’t work and the articles are some computer in Johannesburg.  So here’s the start of my Olympic Blog.  

At last we have a gold medal one of them from a man who’s sideburns are so yellow it a if Spandeu Ballet wrote Gold as a futuristic   tribute to man’s individual hair.  It is unlikely that Britain will achieve   the 95 medals that the expert panel on BBC Radio 5 had suggested but at least know we will not suffer the same fate as Canada in 1984 who are so far the only host nation not to have recorded a gold medal.    It has been so far an Olympics of epic proportions; there has been controversy in the fencing with another South Korean sitting in.  But today was about Britain and about two gold medallists.   There had been disappointment so far as Britain had not managed to achieve a gold medal when one was expected in the road race for Mark Cavendish.   For Cavendish the Olympic curse continues to dog Mark Cavendish.  He was the only cyclist who failed to get a golden medal in Beijing and appears to be the nearly man of British sport.    However at Eton Dorney the pessimism turned to elation as Helen Glover and Heather Stanning brought a 30,000 to their feet as they stormed ahead of the field.    Helen Glover is a true inspiration to the armchair fan for four years ago she had watched the rowing in the Olympics and fancied giving it a go.  Through the sporting giants scheme and was moved on the GB rowing team.  Before then she had no rowing experience whatsoever.    Her partner Heather Stanning   got an emotional message from her fellow soldiers as she won the race.   It was fitting that Heather Stanning rowed at Minerva Bath a rowing club was influential in the suffragette’s movement.  Danny Boyle would be very proud.  

Then at three o clock the main event of the day the Olympic time trial arise Sir (surely after this Olympics) Bradley Wiggins. All he had to do was medal and he would become the most decorated British Olympian of all time.  He didn’t just medal he smashed the rest of the field winning by 42 seconds and Chris Frome added a Bronze medal to Britain’s medal tally.    Bradley wiggins has no doubt transformed cycling in Britain and he is also the only cyclist ever to have won the Olympics and tour de france.    As the cheering crowds went mad at Hampton park Wiggins fever has clearly set in.  He summed it up beautifully later on BBC three after England had beaten Uruguay  1-0 as crowds below had gathered to see the man.  “Now I know how the Beatles felt” he has made sideburns  in his own words “as popular as when Noddy Holder was around”.       

Today there was even more controversy and from a sport in which it is almost impossible to occur in.  Table tennis.  Yes that’s right table tennis, there are also red cards in the table tennis (who knew) .  The number one Ding  Ning was judged to have not thrown the ball six inches in the air.  To almost everyone else it appeared that she had.   Then she asked the line judge as to why she was being penalised and was given a red card and yellow card.      

America marched on again in the swimming giving the crowd another Olympic record in the 200x4 women’s relay.   There were worries that there would be no records in the pool with the banning of the special swim suits that brought 25 world records.  So far in all of the events there have been six.   There were another three today and this brings the tally upto 21 one in the 200m swimming, America again with Rebecca Soni.  It appears that when an American breaks a world record its not “disturbing” right John Leonard.    Oh and just now were talking about Swimming Britain got a silver  Micheal Jamieson  in the men’s 200m breaststroke behind    the record breaker Daniel Gyutar from Hungary.    

Israel is the new South Africa and sport should react accordingly

The cultural boycott of South Africa helped to bring down the racist Apartheid government. It could do the same in Israel.      

In 2013 Israel will host the U21 FIFA 2013 competition.   There are several problems and issues around surrounding this decision by UEFA.  First of all Israel is not in Europe, not even close.   But of course the most serious issue is the human rights issues and the treatment of Palestinian political prisoners.   Jeremy Corbyn recently proposed an EDM regarding the plight of the 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in administrative detention as well as noting that Richard Falk the UN special rappourter for the occupied Palestinian territories has called on the international community to ensure that Israel is adhering to international law.       

Glancing through the names on the EDM there are two key points which stick out to me.  The first of all is the lack of the name George Galloway   a man who is well known for his championing of the Arab people  famously stating to a enamoured audience at Bethnal Green upon his election victory “Tony Blair, this is for Iraq”  and yet he has not signed the EDM, how strange.  The second is the lack of Conservative names who have signed the motion, only two Garry Streeter and Peter Bottomley.       

However, perhaps this is where the Palestinian solidarity campaign can start.   They as well as the Palestinian FA have called for UEFA to give another country the opportunity to host the tournament.    The case of Mahmoud Sahsouk who has recently been released by the Israeli government after being in prison without trial for over three years, had he not gone on hunger strike he would still be in prison. The footballer had been on strike earlier this year and could have died had it not been for human rights groups advising him to stop.  The world of sport needs figures to stand up against racism, fascism and dictatorships.   

 In 1963, South Africa was banned from FIFA; Arthur Ashe campaigned against Apartheid after having his Visa for the South African open turned down and were banned from the 1970 Davis cup.  Marvin Close who is currently writing his latest book behind the walls about the difficulties that Palestine faces in forming its first ever league will put the issue into the limelight once again.  His previous book More than just a game about the prisoners on Robben Island is a fantastic testimony that sport can be used to break down regimes of cruelty.  Look at the impact that the support from the Iranian team had in the “Twitter revolution” in 2009.    

Having been to Robben Island and District six museum after reading Marvin Close’s book there was an exhibition at the District six museum whose title rang true.  The exhibition was about the relationship between the UK and South African football and how the two countries together fought racism.   The title of the exhibition was “racism divides, Football unites”. Well Amen to that.    

UEFA could be in the dock over Racism.

It has been well documented that UEFA have reacted poorly to the blatant racism that has been shown to exist withing Polish and Ukrainian football.  It is ridiculous that Italy was told that one of the main reasons that it was not chosen to host Euro 2012 was because of its problems with racism. 

In all fairness there are many other problems with Italian football such as corruption and match rigging which have played their part as well. Yesterday the Dutch team were subjected to monkey chants by at least 500 people according to the Guardian.  

This is disgusting enough in itself but given that the team had visited Auschwitz only the day before, the infamous concentration where over 1.5 million Jews were killed by the ruthless monstrous Nazi killing machine.  I went to Auschwitz when I was thirteen years old.  If there is a Hell on earth, it is Auschwitz  Not only has UEFA’s decision to book player’s who walk of the pitch if they are subjected to racist abuse morally suspect it is also against Human rights law. If so then the likes of Amnessty, Hope not Hate, show Racism the red card and the FA should be clambering to condemn UEFA.

 I could drone on about FIFA and UEFA’s past failings but the current one of failing to use the beautiful game to combat racism as was done in Robben Island is the most grave.  I am reminded of the Martin Luther King quotation from his letters in Birmingham Prison in Alabama,  ”Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere”.  It is injustice that Holland are not pressing action, it is injustice that Poland and Ukraine are the host nations.  Will it be a threat to the work to kick racism out of football everywhere? 

  

Darlington will either live or die depending on this season.

Darlington will either become a community club or die.  

So the time has come Darlington have slumped to depths which seemed impossible in George Renyolds vision. When Darlington got their new stadium only six years ago it was hailed as the start of a new era and seemed too good to be true.    George Renolyds is now seen in a similar vein as dictators after they have pillaged the wealth of a nation and turned a country into a laughing stock. That is where Darlington is now.  

In the doldrums of the FA in the Northern League the first English team to be relegated four divisions in the FA’s history and the only British team since Gretna to have done so.  This is not a proud record and if the club is too survive then a community club it must become.   

There was a time when Darlington seemed like a club which was a part of the community no apart from it.  In the day’s of Feethams the “old tin shed” as it was lovingly referred to held a certain spirit.  The capacity at Feethams was 8,500 and there were criticisms that the new east end was the beginning of financial ruin for Darlington.  However, compared to Feethams the Northern Echo arena is a nightmare a horror show of a stadium.

 It would be fantastic for a team in the championship  but it is a major factor as to why the club has been in administration three times in the last five years.  The heating costs alone were in the region of £25,000 a week  Mark Cooper resigning last year after eleven days has to be one of the shortest stays of a manger in domestic football.        

However, perhaps this is the opportune moment for Darlington to rise from the ashes.  This was the club which was brave enough all those years ago to play Arthur Wharton a man for whom Stevie Wonder himself gave £20,000 to his statue.      The likes of Chester city, MK Dons, AFC Wimbledon and even FC united who are a division above Darlington should be an inspiration.  The scene in Dead poets’ society where Robbin Wiliams pretends to be a ghost is exactly what needs to be said in the changing room next season at Bishop Auckland.  “Carpe Diem boy’s, Seize the day!”.