Gateshead

Twice in five years, Gateshead has come apart at the exact moment it looked ready to move up. In May 2024 the club was locked out of the National League play-offs not for anything that happened on the pitch, but because it could not produce a 10-year lease on its own stadium — the paperwork the Football League requires before promotion, and the one thing a tenant club, rather than an owner, has struggled to secure since 1977.

The current Gateshead FC only exists because two earlier attempts at football in the town failed. South Shields Adelaide moved across the Tyne in 1930 and became Gateshead A.F.C., a Football League side until 1960 and defunct by 1973. Gateshead United rose in its place and lasted barely three years before liquidation in 1977 forced a fresh start under the name the town still plays under.

That instability makes the run to Wembley in May 2024 count for more than the scoreline suggests. Gateshead drew 2-2 with Solihull Moors in the FA Trophy final and won it on penalties, a year after losing the same final to FC Halifax Town. It was the club's first major trophy since the 1980s, when it took the Northern Premier League title twice, once with a record 100 points.

Home games are played at Gateshead International Stadium, an athletics venue built for 11,800 that had its East Stand roofed over in a £7.6m refit in 2010. The club crest carries the Angel of the North, the sculpture that marks the approach to the town from the south.

Rob Elliot managed the side to that Trophy win. Before him, Mike Williamson — a Newcastle United and England defender in his playing days — took charge and led Gateshead to the National League North title in 2021/22, the step that got the club back among the game's fifth tier after the near-misses of the previous decade.