Story by Ray Simpson

Over 200 people turned out on Friday night at the Dolphin Centre for Martin Gray's testimonial dinner.

Martin celebrated ten seasons at the club as player and then coach at the end of last season, and many tributes were made to a man who would surely have been part of a promotion winning management team last season. His last act for the club was to organise a fund raising match at the end of the season to help the club while it was in administration.

Jeff Winter was on hand as master of ceremonies for the evening, while former Wolves, Burnley and Huddersfield striker Steve Kindon (a former Huddersfield team mate of Darlington FITC Officer Kevin Stonehouse) was guest speaker along with Garry Marshall the comedian.

Martin, who is now assistant manager at Oldham with Dave Penney (who was also on the top table with Raj Singh and Andy Collett), said: "I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone within Darlington FC for their support over the last ten years at the club, My time at Darlington has been very enjoyable and I will miss everyone connected to the club. Thank you also to everyone who has contributed to this evening's event, and to everyone here for taking the time to join me."

"I would like to wish Raj Singh and his team at Darlington FC all the very best for the future and for the coming season."

Martin, who admitted to supporting Middlesbrough in a quiz, thanked Malcolm Crosby for giving him his chance as a player at Sunderland back in the early nineties.

The highlight of the evening was a quiz about Martin, in which the audience had to answer questions using yellow and red cards. It all came down to a tie breaker between ten people about how many goals Martin had scored in his career. One chap cheekily suggested none and another exaggerated by saying 30, but the correct answer was five, although Martin also wanted to add on the two he scored in the all star game in May.

Best wishes to Martin from all the press lads at Darlington, and thanks for your help over the years. We've got several memories of you, the best of them being the night you were flattened, without any provocation on your part, by Swansea sub Walter Boyd at the Vetch Field during the 1999/00 season. Boyd entered the record books as being the first player to be sent off after just entering the field of play.