IT WAS a Sunday afternoon and Darwen FC needed a point on the Anchor against Blackpool Mechanics to clinch the Lancashire Combination double.

The Cup was already in the bag and this match had captured the imagination of the whole town.

I was there among the 1,600 crowd — and the dozens who hopped over and squeezed under the back fence — and there was a carnival atmosphere, I remember. Martin Farnsworth hit a late penalty for Darwen to make it 2-2 and clinch the title.

It was a long time ago. More than 30 years back. And there hasn’t been much to cheer about since then.

Not for the first time, Darwen are in the mire and facing the end of the road.

It was the same back in the early ’20s when Darwen FC (1922) Ltd was formed and in 1960 when Darwen Football and Social Club made its debut after a crisis meeting in the Provident Hall.

It's another tangled web now after the Ted Ward-Kevin Henry bust-up and it will certainly take some unravelling.

A winding-up order could be made in Birmingham as early as Wednesday but there has been frantic behind-the-scenes activity over the weekend — and a glimmer of hope.

What Darwen needs is a healthy injection of money, supporters and volunteers — enthusiasts such as former treasurer Bob Eccles.

He recalled watching Darwen train in the winter of 1962 with chairman Bill Holden, who admitted: “We haven’t enough money to pay the lads. We’re skint.”

Bill told him: “Well, we’ll both stick £500 in and that’ll get us to the end of the season.” And that’s what they did.

Said Bob: “I’d made the mistake of telling Bill I’d saved nearly enough money for a car, a Vauxhall Viva, which was £540. I never did get that car.”

It's easy to blame Ted Ward and his pie-in-the-sky plans and his trail of havoc around town but only a handful of spectators were bothering to turn up. It was only a matter of time.

Journalist John Newman, who has been around the non-league scene for over half a century, told me: “Darwen have always been in the shadow of Blackburn Rovers and success at Ewood in recent years has obviously affected attendances.”

I called in at the Anchor on Saturday and there was a useful crowd considering that it was Darwen’s first home match since early November.

Former president Norman Walsh is confident that the club will at least get to the end of the season and then perhaps it might take off again as a community-based operation.

He reckons that Kevin Henry will make a formal offer on debt repayment on Wednesday and that it is likely to be accepted.

He is planning to call a meeting of interested supporters on Friday to see where the club might go from there.

Hopefully, Mr Henry will take a back seat and let a new committee run the show.

As Coun Trevor Maxfield says: “We want a Darwen club run by Darweners.” Damn right we do.