Background
Woodcock was born in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of Maurice and Margaret Woodcock.
Woodcock was born in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of Maurice and Margaret Woodcock.
He began his football career as an apprentice with Sunderland, but left the club without having played for the first-team, and signed for Darlington, newly promoted to the Football League Third Division, in August 1985. Over the next two seasons, he played 27 league matches, around half of which as a substitute, and scored twice. At the end of his second season, Darlington were relegated back to the Fourth Division, and Woodcock left.
His playing career was ended by a badly broken leg in the mid-1990s, and he resumed working in football in 1998 as manager of Darlington Railway Athletic, where he stayed for ten of the next eleven years.