UP THE HEED! GOATSHEAD

A coincidence this morning leads me to remind you about one of the older and "ex" clubs from the Football League, Gateshead. A young man in the queue to pay his petrol bill in the local Co-op was proudly wearing a Gateshead FC training top, with the well known modern badge in full display, so why not strike up a conversation? He and his partner were on their way north (didn't ask where he started from-but he didn't have an "accent of the north east" if you know what I mean. I think he may have originated from the Barnsley area. He seemed proud of his badge and I suspect he was possibly just heading home from a game.......LAST NIGHT. The Heed, played an away fixture, beating Curzon Ashton 0-1 in a National League game. He had travelled across the Pennines, from south of Oldham, in Greater Manchester.

Gateshead Football Club is a professional football club based in North East England, Tyne and Wear, South of the River Tyne and Newcastle city centre. Population 120,000. The team competes in the National League North, the sixth tier of English football, and play at Gateshead International Stadium. The club is known as the "Tynesiders" or the "Heed". They are owned by the Gateshead Soul Supporters' Society!

The original Gateshead club was formed in 1899 as South Shields Adelaide and became members of the Football League in 1919. In 1930 financial problems saw the club moved to Gateshead, where they adopted the name of their new town. However, the club was voted out of the Football League on  May 28th1960 and folded in 1973. Peterborough United were elected to the Football League from the Midland League. Their election was certainly not a surprise given that they were perhaps the strongest non-league side since WW2 but what was surprising was that Gateshead were voted out – they were third from bottom in Division 4 in 1959/60 with no recent record of previously needing to seek re-election. Other clubs re-relected were Oldham, Hartlepool and Southport.

History repeated itself as the South Shields club, formed to replace the original one, was also moved to Gateshead, becoming Gateshead United in 1974. However, they were dissolved at the end of the 1976-7 season. Established in 1977 after the "historic" Gateshead United folded.

The new club took over from United in the Northern Premier league. After three seasons in the bottom half of the table, they finished eleventh in 1980-1, also reaching the first round of the FA Cup for the first time, losing 1–0 at Lincoln City. The club finished fourth in the league the next season.

The current incarnation of the club began life in the Northern Premier League winning Premier Division titles in 1982–83, with a record number of points (100) and scoring 114 goals and also in the 1985–86 season. However they were relegated out of the Conference in 1984 and 1987. They secured promotion back into the Conference at the end of the 1989–90 season, though would remain there only until another relegation in 1998. The club were further relegated out of the Northern Premier League Premier Division in 2003. They won the First Division play-offs in 2004 and the Premier Division play-offs in 2008, before winning promotion out of the Conference North with a second-placed finish in 2008–09. Gateshead spent the next decade in the top-flight of English football's non-League system, losing a play-off final in 2014, before they were demoted into the National League North in 2019 due to financial irregularities. BUT still exists!

The Angel of the North.

Gateshead, first named in "Bede's History of the English People", was placed "at the goat's head", a high place frequented by...yes you guessed it.....coal mining, salt extraction and river trade gave the locals something to do! William Cotesworth in the 17th-early 18th century created industry from the local resources including candles from local  "tallow" (animal fat) and from further afield. Imported from the Indies, were dyes, flax, wine, grain, chocolate, tea, sugar and tobacco. Sir Joseph Swan's experiments in the late 19th Century one way and another led to the invention of the electric light bulb!!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8WfzW53YJLeK6PWly0BbNw

Curzon Ashton FC from Ashton under Lyne, Greater Manchester, started up in 1963 from an amateur set up, when Curzon Road Methodists FC and Assheton Amateurs FC from the Manchester Amateur League joined up. They are one of two of the town's prominent football teams; the other  Ashton Utd FC. Ashton United was the first team in the Manchester Football Association  to win an FA Cup tie, when they beat Turton 3–0 in 1883. 

In 1885, they were the first winners of the Manchester Senior Cup beating Newton Heath (who later became Manchester United) in the final. Curzon Ashton FC, currently compete in the Northern Premier League Premier Division, the seventh tier of English football, the highest level in the club's history, playing at Hurst Cross; they play at the Tameside Stadium.