Our achievement last season split our supporters. The majority seems
to view last season as a failure. We had high expectations of our
squad which was the highest paid squad ever assembled by Darlington.
Our failure to push on and get an automatic promotion spot in the
final 1/4 of the season didn't go down well.
On the other hand we hadn't reached the play-offs since the
1999/2000 season and have been in the basement division since 1992,
so finishing 6th was a success, just not to the level that we
expected.
We were hugely hampered by injuries last season. The play-off games
against Rochdale highlighted this. We played the 1st leg with only 1
recognised striker and during the game a further 3 players went off
injured, including our top scorer Tommy Wright and our left back
Parker and neither of them recovered in time for the 2nd leg.
In the 2nd leg we played with a single striker who is actually a
midfielder (as we had little other option, we even had to have a 15
year old on the bench!!) and then he went off injured too!!
Personally I think last season was a small success, unfortunately it
appears that the cost of that success is a much smaller budget for
the season ahead...
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