The club is very sad to learn about the passing of our former manager, Lol Morgan.

Lol, who was 90, was our player-manager when we won promotion from the old Fourth Division to the Old Third Division in season 1965-66 – our first promotion at the time for 39 years.

After he arrived at Darlington from Rotherham in 1964, he transformed a club that had been in the lower half of the table into promotion winners, just missing out on the title. 1966 might have been a memorable year for England’s World Cup win, but it was also extra special for Darlington fans with promotion to the Third Division.

Lol was responsible for bringing in players like Bobby Cummings and Alan Sproates, who played key roles in that magnificent promotion campaign, and he was a very popular manager with the players and fans.

At the end of the promotion season, Lol controversially moved to Second Division Norwich City for three seasons, and after that he became a scout for Tottenham Hotspur.

Lol was interviewed by RS for the Farewell to Feethams book in 2002. Here's what he said; 

Lol was appointed player-manager in June 1964, but for the first month of his reign he shared an office with his predecessor, Eddie Carr.
“Eddie had been told by the board that he wouldn't be staying on as manager and when I arrived, he still had a month to go on his contract and the board wouldn’t pay him up.
“So instead of staying away from the ground, he continued to come to work. He didn't have anything to do, but just sat behind a desk in the same office as me. There was no bad feeling between us, and he didn't bother me at all. Some days he wouldn't even come into work."
Lol's first season didn't see Quakers doing much in the league, but instead they had a good run in the FA Cup. After winning 2-1 at Scunthorpe, Quakers' next opponents were the old enemy, Hartlepool, at the Victoria Ground,
And unusually, Quakers decided to stay overnight, at a hotel in Seaton Carew. "I wanted the players to be at their best the following day. Their manager, Brian Clough, tried to take the mickey out of me in his interviews on the television and in the papers, but it didn't work."
Quakers drew 0-0, then four days later completed the job with a 4-1 replay win in front of 14,466 at Feethams, a victory which earned them a home tie with Arsenal in the third round.
"Because Ray Yeoman was injured at the time, I asked him to go and watch Arsenal play. He watched them the Saturday before we were due to play them, and when I spoke to him a day later, he told me: "This is the worst Arsenal team I've ever seen."
"On the same day. I had a conversation with a journalist from the Daily Mail. I told him what Ray had said, and the next morning, I picked up the paper and here it was word for word.
"We never got to grips with Arsenal on the day, and we lost 2-0.
"The team spirit around then was tremendous. We didn't have many players, so I couldn't rotate them like managers do nowadays. The players knew very well that if they had a bad day, they would still be playing the next week. Everybody gave their best."
Lol worked very hard in the summer of 1965 looking for new players, and he and chief scout Jack Watson brought in Tony Moor, Joe Jacques and Brian Keeble.
They started the 1965-66 season slowly with four wins from the first eleven matches, but the turning point came at a League Cup tie at Blackpool on October 13^th 1965.

Blackpool, with several stars in their side, were still a First Division side then, but Quakers won 2-1 with goals from Billy Hopper and George McGeachie.
"We all went out for a beer afterwards to Blackpool Tower.
"A few days before the game, I had been instructed by the board not to let a certain player on the coach because he had been in jail all night as he'd been involved in a fracas.
"I told him that he would probably be suspended, and if he was, then he would never play for the club again. He didn't like that, and sure enough when the board met, he was suspended.
"After the Blackpool game, we were all having a few beers, and this particular
player came over to me and I feared the worst.
"But instead, he shook my hand, and told me that it was the best he'd ever seen Darlington play."
The last game of that season was against Torquay United on May 21st. Quakers needed a point to guarantee a promotion place, a victory for the title.
They had to settle for a 0-0 draw, but Lol says: "I thought we'd lost it. Torquay scored a goal from well out, and I thought we were 1-0 down. But Dickie Deacon, the trainer, said: "Look, Lol, the linesman's got his flag up for offside." The player who was offside was well out on the wing, and he wasn't interfering with play.
"It was my happiest moment in football when we were promoted. One of the lads even threw his shirt into the crowd. I played hell with him, as we hadn't the money to buy any more.”
However, on that famous day, there was a big question mark hanging over Lol's
future.
"I came to Darlington on a player's contract, for less money than I was earning at Rotherham. I played part time there, and I had a job outside football, just like a lot of players.
"I was on £30 per week then, which wasn't a lot of money. The chairman, Harry Robinson. offered me an extra £10 per week, and I told the chairman if that was all I was worth, I was packing in at the end of the season."
The story broke in the Northern Echo on April 22nd 1966, and under the headline "Morgan quits the Quakers" Bob James wrote: "Lol Morgan resigned yesterday - because he doesn't want to be the poorest paid manager in the Third Division next season.”
He commented further: "Darlington's directors will find themselves facing a barrage of criticism over Lol's departure from Feethams - and it is a storm of their own making. In two years he has wrought a great transformation but not until a week ago did the directors offer him a contract, or even a pay rise."
The fans weren't too happy, and chanted his name at subsequent games, both at home and away. After the 1-0 win over Luton, there was a twist in the tale, when it was announced over the tannoy that Lol had signed a new contract.
"I wasn't offered a new deal at all," said Lol. "The board never came back with anything more."
When it was becoming even more and more clear that Lol wouldn't be staying, Norwich contacted him. "It was a so-called secret phone call. When I wasn't offered a new deal, they asked me to become their new manager."
Lol had three years at Carrow Road, but then he had a chance to come back to Darlington in the summer of 1970. "I got a phone call from the chairman at the time. They'd just sacked somebody, and asked if I was interested in coming back.
"I told them that I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't move up there, because my wife and I had just moved back to Rotherham. I told them that I was quite happy to do the job and live in a flat in the town. At a meeting, the chairman said that he wanted me to live up here, but I repeated what I’d told him earlier, and that we’d wasted each other’s time.

“The chairman replied that if I’d gone up there to meet them, I might have changed my mind about moving. I wouldn’t, so it fell through. My wife cried, because she wanted to come back to Darlington.”

Everyone at Darlington FC would like to send their sincere condolences to Lol’s family and friends.