This is not a sad story; not yet and perhaps not at all.
How can it be sad when Gateshead are at Wembley, when a cup final beckons, when silverware glistens, when so much of what they have done this season has been so joyous, so surprising and so good? But it is not a happy story, either. Not quite. How can it be happy when, after straining for survival and finding a way to thrive, they have been undone and undermined by circumstances beyond their control?
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What is Gateshead’s ending? It is an existential sort of question for an existential sort of club, who play in the fifth tier of English football at a borrowed athletics stadium, a cold sort of home.
Immediately to the north, across the Tyne, they must compete for attention with the monolith that is Newcastle United. Eleven miles to the east, Sunderland are another draw. Caught in between these great north-east rivals, Gateshead are squeezed. This is their historical story.
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That question about an ending became heightened five years ago when Gateshead screeched towards oblivion. The ownership of Dr Ranjan Varghese, the Hong Kong-based businessman, had been fraught. Players were routinely paid late, there was a transfer embargo, supporters subsidised the cost of pre-match meals, and a local launderette was owed £1,000 ($1,250) and refused to wash the team’s playing kit. They were ejected from the International Stadium and had to train at Hebburn Town of the Northern League.
To finish ninth in 2018-19 was a beautiful ‘f*** you’ to reality; a nine-point deduction for financial irregularities and relegation to the National League North was reality’s humourless response. Gateshead were saved by a small, heroic cadre of players and staff who clung on against the odds, by volunteers and fans who coalesced around them. With hours to spare, they were rescued by a supporter-led consortium.
Since then, they have found a way to thrive again, led to promotion two years ago by Mike Williamson, the former Newcastle defender, playing expansive football and reaching the final of last season’s FA Trophy, where they lost 1-0 to Halifax Town. Last October, Williamson moved on to MK Dons of League Two, but if this was the end of an era, it barely registered. Rob Elliot, another Newcastle old-boy, stepped up from his role as technical director to become interim manager and results improved.
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After securing a second consecutive FA Trophy final place, Gateshead ended their league season with five matches in 10 days, a ridiculous sequence. Their final fixture was a home tie against Bromley on April 20, which they won 2-1, leaving them sixth in the table and in a play-off position. They were three games away from a first return to the English Football League (EFL) since 1960 when a previous incarnation of the club was voted out of the old Fourth Division.
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They had done it with smarts and ingenuity and little expenditure, even for their level. Gateshead’s average league attendance of 1,206 was the second-lowest in the National League. Then, on April 21, two days before they were due to play Solihull Moors in the play-offs, it was announced that the game would not take place because the club did not meet the EFL’s entry criteria, having failed to receive a 10-year security of tenure at the International Stadium.
This is their present story; all that work, all that sacrifice, the grind of a league season, a small squad that lost its management team in the autumn and then some of their best players in January, that kept reinventing itself until the point that bureaucracy reinvented them yet again. “It’s Gateshead. It’s just a never-ending rollercoaster,” Greg Olley, the captain, tells The Athletic — and it doesn’t feel like hyperbole.
Olley should know. He was playing here five years ago when Gateshead were dipping downwards with some velocity. “The drama!” the midfielder says with a smile. What sticks out most from back then is the long away trips to Aldershot and Dover when overnight stays were an unaffordable luxury, matchdays beginning on the coach at 5am, players stretching out on the floor to sleep or for a bit of comfort.
“Not getting paid was a big one,” he says. “It would always come eventually, but it would be a month and a half late. A lot of stuff was crammed into a few months, like pretty much getting kicked out of the stadium, and it took its toll but you just get on with it.
“You’ve got no other choice, so you go with the flow and we actually won a lot of games that year.”
Their recovery since then has been remarkable, which makes what happened three weeks ago harder to bear. “We’ve gone through every emotion possible over the last couple of months,” Olley says. “We had the jubilation of getting back to Wembley, the exhaustion of doing Thursday-Saturday-Monday-Thursday games, to feeling pretty happy with ourselves at getting into the play-offs and then being told that we’re not in, to running around trying to understand what was going on.
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“You work so hard for 46 games, just ploughing through everything. The club is run on a really small budget as it is, so you’re already at a bit of a deficit and punching above your weight. For it then to be taken out of our control like that is just so gutting.”
Bromley won the play-off final on penalties, beating Solihull Moors.
Culpability is a moving target. Gateshead do not own the ground they have played in since the 1971-72 season — a long-running sore — and because Gateshead Council, which does, is seeking partners for its leisure facilities (like many local councils, it desperately need income), firm guarantees about the management or ownership of the stadium cannot be given.
Assurances offered to the EFL included “a 10-year agreement between the council and Gateshead Football Club, that includes a break clause… to ensure that any new operator can negotiate new terms with the club”, but this was rejected, with the EFL saying in a statement that “avoidable circumstances are preventing Gateshead from progressing up the pyramid even if the club achieves success through sporting merit”. The club’s appeal was rejected by an independent arbitrator.
It all feels so late and unnecessary and unfair. The concern is that, unless something changes, Gateshead could find themselves again blocked from promotion in 12 months. Clubs and teams and dressing rooms are delicate and players need to know they have an opportunity to improve and progress. Uncertainty festers in football.
“Last week, we had the board sit in front of us — all the players and staff — just to ask any questions about what was going on, what the process was, and whether anything has materialised since,” Olley says. “As far as next season goes, we’re going to be in the same position as we are right now, which is far from ideal if we want to bring players in. Can we get promoted? We’re in a bit of limbo.”
Elliot, 38, a Londoner who made 55 league appearances for Newcastle as a goalkeeper and fell in love with the region, believes the impasse will be resolved. “We have to have confidence in the club, the community, the council, and all the parties involved to right a wrong for some fantastic young human beings who have dedicated 10 months of their lives to this,” he says. “I have faith that everyone involved will do the right thing and get it sorted. It will be rectified.”
He believes, too, that Gateshead can keep their team together and go again.
“Yeah, I’m really confident,” says Elliot. “We know we can get a lot better. I wouldn’t say we underachieved but we had all those games close together, we lost big players, and sixth was the minimum we were expecting. The challenge to the lads is can they go one step further next year? As a team and management team, it’s a case of unfinished business.”
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In this respect, Elliot provides Gateshead with some certainty. He has been in temporary charge for seven months, a contradiction in terms, and was never supposed to be doing this job, but he is planning for the future. “Everyone knows we’re very happy here, that we love it here,” he says. “There’s more to do. My title has never been a priority because it’s not needed to be. Nobody is in a rush to go anywhere.”
Before all that, they have Wembley again and Solihull Moors in the FA Trophy final, “pushing for something that would stamp us in a small team’s history, something massive for everyone involved”, as Olley puts it. “It would be a good way to start the summer and a good ending to a season that’s been pretty special.” Gateshead is a club that has become well-versed in endings and beginnings.
They travel to London — on the train this time, rather than a bus — with a “sense of injustice, definitely”, Elliot says. “But the only way we can channel that is by getting over the next hurdle and it’s on the biggest stage of all. I had a good career and never played at Wembley, so we need to recognise what a huge honour it is, enjoy it, and respect the fact the lads have worked so hard to get there.
“We’re extremely disappointed with what’s happened and can’t pretend not to be. But in life, you can react to setbacks in one of two ways. You can let it affect you and that takes away the power you have as a person and a footballer. Or you can smash it head-on and become stronger for it. Regardless of how painful it might be in the instant, this group will definitely become stronger for the experience.”
Strength in adversity has always been part of Gateshead’s story, too.
(Top photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)