Bye George
Well, it was interesting. One way of putting it. George Reynolds put Darlo on the map, even if it was a place you didn't fancy much while he was there. He left with a 27,000 seater stadium almost finished and a team 91st in the League. He was "larger than life." Even larger, if he turned up on your doorstep at 3am. He didn't take us into the Premiership in five years, that's for sure. He took himself off to jail for a three-stretch in about the same period though. Even if you weren't there, this is what you missed...
"I'm dyslexic, backward, mentally deficient and couldn't read or write.
So I've got everything going for me as chairman of a football club."
"Are you honestly telling me that there's no money in football? There's
no money in some football clubs because the people that run them are stupid.
It's not the agents to blame, it's not the players to blame, and it's
not the managers. It's the chairmen - they write the cheques. Beckham
was asking for £160,000 a week, was he? He wouldn't get it from me. Money
doesn't buy success. Get the kids in."
"They got a bonus if they didn't get a bonus, but if you didn't get a
bonus
you still got a bonus and if they missed out on all the bonuses you got
a
bonus." (on the team's pay structure under manager David Hodgson)
"I wish they would let me do it at that price - I'd make a bloody good
profit. Not only that, I'd have had it well under way by now." (On Wembley's
redevelopment.)
"We'll get to the Premiership in five years." "I expect to see Darlington become Premier League. You might laugh,
but where were Fulham five years ago? If Al Fayed can do it, I can do
it. All he's got is a corner shop. And it's all my own money, you know.
There's probably no one else in Europe who's built a stadium with his
own money."
"I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm ready to run away
from
this club. I'm not. "Three years ago..when I said that football clubs were spending far
too much on wages and it was going to end in disaster, I got jeckled (sic).
But it has. If you pay out more than's coming in, you'll get into trouble.
If you give a housewife £400 a week and she spends £600, by the end of
the year you'll be in trouble. And football managers are not businessmen. The Reynolds Arena
"Someone throw a blanket over me, so I can have a cry."
"If you paid players on a no-win, no-pay basis you would get different results. I would like to do that but they want a big salary and appearance money on top.
They are going to have to accept the bubble has burst." "If we are not allowed to bring funds in at the end of the season, the
club will close." A few quotes from TV documentary "George Reynolds
- By His Own Rules, BBC1 North East, Oct 2003
"Why should they be scared of me? I'm 67. And you get 20 young lads, 19 to 25, what chance would I have against them? They wouldn't have it on a one-to-one. Who's the coward?"
"People are alright in groups - until you knock on their door at 2 o'clock
in the morning. If anyone has a go at me, I find out where they live and
go and knock on the door. As soon as I do that, they ring the police!"
On Feethams
The Fans
"Never listen to the fans or the manager."
"If I turned the clock back, maybe I should have got into buying Sunderland instead of Darlington. But there again, I came to Darlington because it was a lame duck."
"I've built a fantastic stadium, well in excess of £30m of fantastic stadium. Then they have the audacity and the cheek to have a go at you."
On success
On the media
On the team
"Football's easy, just don't pay the players. They don't seem to realise the bubble's burst. They can't get that into their thick skulls for some reason."
As quoted in The Times"I have got top players here earning £120,000 a-year, and top surgeons
don't
get that. But the fans are watching players who just aren't trying."
Daily
Mail
Scotland On Sunday
Northern Echo
The Sun
Various
The Independent
My message to the fans is this: 'If you don't have faith in me to move
the
club upwards and make it financially stable, who do you suggest could
do
it?'"
Northern Echo
The Independent
The Sun, after the Kidderminster defeat on the opening day of the Reynolds Arena
The Sun, Aug 2003
Northern Echo report of court hearing to stop the Reynolds Arena holding
a car boot sale.
On critics
"They give a load of slobber when they're in a group, so you know what I do, I find out where they live and go to their house and knock on the door and they go 'Oh, I've got nothing to do with it!' I'll ring the police'"
"And these people who chuck it out and never take it back - they're alright in a group, but if get them individual, on their own, and boy, I've seen them, they scream like pigs."
"Feethams is a nice little ground. All Feethams needs really is a big JCB putting through it. I must admit, I love this Feethams, I love it like a hole in the head."
"The customer is always…..(Luke Raine interjects)…wrong."
"It's a criminal offence in the North East to be successful, to be ambitious..to work hard…you can get locked up for it. I have been locked up for it in the past."
The programme deals with Mr Reynolds' visits, several, to the
home of the editor of the Northern Echo newspaper. Police confirm they've
investigated a complaint, but no further action is being taken.
"Me and Peter Barron, the editor of the Northern Echo, he doesn't like me, I don't like him. Like the police said to me, 'Well it's upset his wife and kids,' So what? What's so special about that? It was good enough to upset my wife and kids, why shouldn't his wife and kids be upset? I'm prepared to sit down head to head but he can't answer the questions. But it's no good ringing the police. What can the police do? He'll get sick before I do, that's a dead cert."
(Phone conversation with manager Mick Tait) "Why don't we fetch a new
system, pay on a win or lose, what about that? Because they all tell you
how wonderful they are, how good they are. They're all f***ing Beckhams
aren't they? Until they get out there."
"If these players don't like what I or my wife have said, they can **** off - they can leave if they don't like what I'm saying And I won't be travelling to Exeter to watch a pile of s***e."
The Express
"Tommy
Taylor can have as many players as he wants as long as the fans make the
turnstiles turn. It's like if you were earning £500 a week and your wife
was spending £1,000. How long are you going to last? How long before the
bailiff comes and puts you out on the street?
Northern Echo
"They shouldn't have sacked you, they should have shot you."
(at an industrial tribunal of club barmaid sacked after being late
66 times).
The Express
"He's costing us a bob or two. Players like him don't come cheap." on agreeing to sign former Newcastle Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla.
"I'm absolutely gutted. I didn't sleep at all last night..I feel like crying.
On 5-Live after the deal collapsed when the player wanted more money.
"He reneged on the deal to us. I can fully understand why the football industry's in such a mess. Where are the days of the gentlemen's agreement, a shake of the hand and (when) even a contract was binding? They are not worth the paper they're printed on unless it's in their favour."
Statement on the club website after Asprilla's walk-out.
"When I took over, I made three promises to the
wonderful Darlington public. The first was to clear all the debts, the second was
to build them an all-seater football stadium, and the third was to get
them into the Premiership. "I've almost completed two of the three, and will complete the third."
The Express, August 2002
Safe and sound
"I started blowing safes up, never in private houses, mind, or small companies. I did plcs, because there was no difference between them and me. They robbed people with Parker pens instead of sticks of gelignite, that's all."
"Do you know what I've always wanted to do, I've always wanted to go on television and blow a safe, let people see how good I was. I was the third-best in Europe, you know."
When I was done with a safe you could still close the door, except for
one I did when the door went through the roof. It'll all be in my hortobiography
(sic), which is going to be called 'George Reynolds: Cracked It'."
The Independent
From a bunker near you
"His hostile, malicious and vindictive propoganda is reminiscent of the (words missing)..expounded by Goebbels and his mouthpiece Lord Haw Haw. They too were guilty of lies, rumours, aggression and hate and look where it got them! Hitler would have been proud of Mr McLean and enrolled him in his propoganda machine and awarded him the Iron Cross." Statement on official website. Mr McLean is David McLean, a 16-year-old fanzine editor - banned indefinitely by the club.
"We would also like to announce that we will will be removing the message board from our website owing to the fact that it gets rid of a small minority of the cranks."
"Let no-one be in any doubt that detractors can expect confrontation
either at the ground or at home."
Club statemment, September 2003, after criticism of banning of website editor Scott Thornberry.
Calling in the administrators - December 2003
"This is not a crisis. I have had worse crises than this."
Last words - January 12 2004
Well, er...not quite...
In court, before the Official Receiver:
"We have done nothing wrong. I'll admit we have done something wrong. We haven't done it right, the things we have done wrong."
He said of himself and GRUK's other directors.
The liquidator's barrister asked if Mr Reynolds had taken any professional
advice about building a 27,500-seater stadium for a club like Darlington
where the average attendance was about 3,000. "No, thank God," said Mr
Reynolds. "To be quite honest with you, there's been that much going on in me head with transfers for the football club, I would not know whether we were in the New Year or New York."
I am oblivious to paperwork"
"I am not academical, I am a practical man. If they make a mistake, I am up a gum tree. The position I have found out recently is everyone seems to cover their own back - it's sad, but they never cover yours."
"There's all sorts of things coming out of the woodworm."
"I must get 10,000 faxes, but I never read them."
Still going strong
"The world is full of dreamers hiding behind sophisticated feasibility studies, business plans and cashflow projections." Northern Echo
"Darlington FC will be in the Premiership one day even if I'm in a box.
Nothing in life's impossible. The customer is always wrong." The Daily
Telegraph - a few hours after they reported this, he'd left the club.
"The position is, if they want me out so badly - and it's only a small
minority of supporters - all they've got to do is put their money where
their mouths are. But they can't do it. They're talking about raising
£250,000 - that wouldn't do it for a month. They're dreamers. It's a sad
thing to say, but I'm enjoying it. I'm really enjoying the crack. I'm
sitting back and relaxing."
The Journal, January 14 2004 "I am a hands-on motivator, not a paperworm"
"If I was made bankrupt my standard of living would go through the ceiling. What people fail to realise is that for five years I have been paying for the privilege of going to work." Northern EchoAfter they took the Reynolds Arena letters off the stadium...
"We have put a lot of work into that stadium and now
you just watch it go downhill. Darlington Football Club will never, ever,
ever get another Georgie Reynolds - that's fact. It's the finest stadium
in Europe for the third division. No, it's the finest in the world. They
have killed the hen that laid the golden egg." Northern Echo
Parting shots:
"George Reynolds is booming again - I was bankrupt on the Friday and a millionaire on the Saturday - I'm a bloody genius aren't I?" BBC Look North after the creditors' meeting, which saw the ownership transfer to Sterling.
Printed on his gold business card: "George Reynolds, managing director, chairman, gentleman, entrepreneur, adventurer, maker of money and utter genius."
Others on George
"He speaks from the heart but has to be more careful what he says."
Susan Reynolds, Northern Echo
"It was funny for the first 24 hours. He just revelled in it, but it's
getting really irritating now. I know I wind people up on my show but
this
is past a joke."
(Radio presenter Goffy on being pestered with phone
calls
from George after his side Hartlepool lost the play-off semi-final)
Northern Echo
Sky Sports popular presenter Jeff Stelling and Hartlepool fan had these words to say in his column for SkySports.com: "The 25,000-capacity Reynolds Stadium is a monument to his own greatness, but it's also the equivalent of Victorian folly. Or as they call it in the North-East - "the Madness of King George." Both Faustino Asprilla and Paul Gascoigne, two one-time transfer targets, saw through him, which is more than can be said of the football authorities. The truest emotions regarding any football club come from the fans, who view it as a loved one as opposed to a cash cow. Like Leeds, Darlington supporters are suffering. But Reynolds admits he's quite enjoying the sight of fans around the town centre with their begging bowls.... As a Hartlepool fan myself, Darlington have always been our rivals, but I do genuinely hope they survive."
TIPS FOR THE TABLOIDS - AND SOME OF THE QUALITIES:
Throwing a story together about George, was as easy as "throwing" a
match. It produced some of the laziest and frankly sickly humbug that
Wapping, many of them so-called quality writers, could produce. The rules
were simple..and boy did they slavishly fall into the trap:
Reynolds was jailed for three years on October 21 2005 after admitting tax evasion worth £650,000. Half a million pounds had been found in cash in his car by police.
"He sits a broken man, personally and financially, ruined, in failing
health with failing memory. His social life was work. He didn't go out
to dinner, he doesn't drink. His only luxury, as awful as it is, is chewing
Nicotinell to stop him from smoking".
"Tragically, thanks to Darlington Football Club - football being a sport
that he doesn't have the slightest interest in - it's all gone".
"The house next to the Spice Girls gone, the yacht
has gone, the house in the
Lake District, gone. He really has lost everything, even his famous
comb-over hairstyle from the
top of his head." "Nowhere else do the people who go to watch
pretty dreadful performances go to their seats by
escalators. No steps for them."
"If they desire to dispose of the contents of their
bladder after a drinking session, they do so in marble
halls."
"This is not simply a case of a misunderstanding. It has been a deliberate
failing, to falsify the position and cheat the Revenue of what it was
entitled to" "You launched into creating that egocentric folly,
namely the George Reynolds Arena, superbly equipped
and appointed stadium of the historic Darlington
Football Club."
And finally the man himself....
"I understand they have televisions in prisons now - but I can guarantee I won't be watching football."
"You always have to look on the bright side of life and I have been trying to lose weight for years - now I'll have the chance to get trim. I graduated from the school of hard knocks this is just another knock along the way. But you can bet your life I will be back."
The Northern Echo
Reynolds' barrister David Robson QC
Christopher Knox, prosecuting.
Judge Guy Whitburn.
"If I go down, it will be a relief. This whole matter has been hanging over me for 18 months and I am glad it has come to an end and I will get on with my life, whether inside or outside. I am not bothered about going to prison."