Meshakhte

The coal under Tkibuli paid for the town, and the football team took its name from it. Meshakhte is the miner, and the Miners is what the club has been called ever since.

The seasons still worth talking about arrived at the start of the 1980s. Meshakhte won the Georgian SSR championship in 1980, then went back and won it again in 1981 — a republic title being the ceiling available to a pit town in that system. The cups had come earlier and further apart: 1964, then a gap of twelve years to 1976. In between, in 1966, the side went to the all-union final for works and amateur teams.

Independence redrew the map and the club has not won anything national since. The Second League's central zone in 1990 is the last title on the list. Third place in the First League came three times in the 1990s, second place in 2008, and, most recently, second in Erovnuli Liga 2 in 2024. The current black-and-white kit is the only thing about the modern club that would look familiar to a supporter of the 1980s, along with the Vladimer Bochorishvili Stadium.

The club was put together in 1938, in the years when Tkibuli's mines were expanding and the workforce arriving with them needed something to do on a Sunday. Everything since — the republic titles, the name itself — runs back to that.