Michael Walker
It must constitute one of the most spectacular gestures of faith in the history of ex-offenders. At 4pm on Wednesday, in the ambassador suite of third division Darlington football club, the club chair George Reynolds – a one- time safe-blower with four years in prison on his CV – was handed the most treasured prize in football, the FA Cup. That it was given to him by the Cup sponsor AXA, an insurance company, surely made Reynolds’s rehabilitation complete.
It is more than 30 years since Reynolds’s days of smuggling gelignite under the fridge of his Mr Softee ice-cream van, and he has acquired the respectability and authority of a self-made millionaire since then. So when Darlington became the first so-called “lucky loser” in the FA Cup this week, AXA representatives had no qualms about speeding up the M1 to County Durham to hand over their most precious silverware.
But it should be said that the trophy’s lid was stuck down.
“I’m taking it all home,” said an AXA representative.
Darlington’s good fortune was the result of Manchester United’s government- inspired betrayal of the Cup. United’s withdrawal to compete in the World Club Championships in Brazil in January meant that only 63 teams would go into the famous third-round draw instead of 64.
The Football Association came up with the idea of holding another draw featuring the second-round losing teams to find the 64th competitor, which would play against Aston Villa. Darlington came out of the hat. Their odds of winning the competition are 1 500 to one.
It was the second striking piece of luck this year for the underachieving club. In May, as liquidation threatened, Reynolds (62) walked into the club’s ground, Feethams, and wiped out the 5,5-million debt with a single cheque. He also paid off seven employees’ mortgages and gave each of them a new Mercedes.
Reynolds then took the struggling club into his vast kitchen worktop and chipboard business, a slice of which he had sold earlier in the year for 40- million.
To say his has been an unlikely rise is like saying Jeffrey Archer is occasionally economical with the truth. Indeed, it would take the combined imaginations of Archer and Catherine Cookson to create a maverick character like Reynolds.
Born into 1930s poverty in Sunderland’s Dock Street East, George Reynolds was sent to a workhouse at the age of eight.
By the time he reached his first prison cell, sentenced for blowing safes, he was an illiterate. But in prison the inmate learned to read and write, while also making money selling contraband. His hero is Norman Stanley Fletcher.
On his release Reynolds’s entrepreneurship blossomed. He estimates his wealth today at 300-million.
In May, while Reynolds was out buying a car for his son, the dealer asked why the businessman had not come to the aid of his struggling local club. A few days later Reynolds handed Darlington a large cheque.
The club is progressing well in division three but in the FA Cup lost out to Gillingham.
Wednesday’s redraw offered the new club chair another second chance and, as he held on to the trophy, he said: “I had a feeling it would be us. I’ve got a direct line with him upstairs. It’s ex-directory and I’m the only one who knows it.”
He was holding on tight.