Over the years, it has helped drive one man to bankruptcy and it has sucked in many fortunes, so Mowden Park rugby club deserve the town’s gratitude for taking it on in 2012 and preventing it becoming a derelict eyesore.
In doing so, it has become the biggest rugby stadium outside Twickenham, which is a hell of a claim to fame for Darlington.
It seats 25,000 in a town where if either the football or rugby clubs attract a crowd a tenth of that, they will feel they have had a good day.
It is to be hoped Mowden – an impressive community club – can continue to make a go of the stadium, and begin to create the “multi-sports facility” around it. However, it is noted that they are also talking with a developer.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Darlington Football Club’s attempts to find, or build, a new permanent, reasonably-sized, home are making no obvious bricks-and-mortar progress – the club describes the process as “extremely time consuming and unfortunately very slow moving”.
Can the two ever come together for the good of the town? Can a sensibly-sized and sustainable stadium emerge on the Neasham Road site that could be shared by rugby and football, perhaps with other sports around it, and perhaps financed by a housing development now that the fields on the opposite side of the road are full?
Or will this never-ending stadium saga drag on for another 25 years?
