Blyth Spartans

Blyth is a shipbuilding and coal town on the Northumberland coast, and for a stretch of the twentieth century its football club gave it something the docks and the collieries never could: a name known in Birmingham and London. Fred Stoker, a 21-year-old medical student, called the first meeting at his home on Bath Terrace in September 1899 and became the club's first secretary. They played five different grounds before settling at Croft Park in 1909, opening it against Newcastle United Reserves.

Nothing built the club's name like the 1977–78 FA Cup. Blyth Spartans, part-timers from the Northern League, went through Chesterfield, Enfield and Stoke City, then drew away at Wrexham. The replay at St James' Park drew 42,167 people and ended 2–1 to Wrexham, but by then the run had already made Alan Shoulder's name enough for Newcastle United to sign him. The club came close to repeating it decades later, leading Birmingham City 2–0 in 2014–15 before losing 3–2, and in 2008–09 they beat Shrewsbury Town and Bournemouth on their way to the Third Round.

Domestically the club's currency was the Northern League, won ten times through the 1970s and 1980s, and the Northumberland Senior Cup, lifted 22 times. Robbie Dale spent seventeen years in green and white, from 1997 to 2014, making 680 appearances and scoring 212 goals, a run few non-league players anywhere can match. Derby day means North Shields, and the rivalry with Morpeth Town has its own fixture in the calendar around New Year. Relegation from the National League North at the end of 2024–25 sent them back down to the Northern Premier League, the level from which Stoker's club first pushed on more than a century ago.