Gateshead FC

Gateshead Football Club was founded in 1977, taking the place of Gateshead United after years of clubs folding and reforming in this corner of the North East. Football in Gateshead has always been precarious but passionate, a story of resilience. The Heed – or the Tynesiders – wear their history with pride, carrying on the legacy of earlier incarnations like Gateshead AFC, who played in the Football League from 1930–1960.

It’s worth remembering that the tale actually begins across the water: in 1899 Jack Inskip formed South Shields Adelaide Athletic, the club that would climb into the League after the First World War. By 1930, financial strain pushed a move upriver: FA approval came in July and a new side, Gateshead, kicked off at Redheugh Park – a pitch carved from what locals called the “Clay Hole.” They ran out in claret shirts with light blue sleeves, then cycled through colours – even black-and-white stripes – until benefactor Bill Tulip, famous for the white orchid in his lapel, inspired the now-familiar white shirts and black shorts.

Gateshead made a mark. In 1931/32 they missed promotion to Division Two on goal average; in 1953 they stunned Liverpool in the FA Cup, then went out in the quarter-finals to a Nat Lofthouse goal for Bolton, the eventual winners. Yet League life ended cruelly: despite finishing above others, Gateshead were voted out in 1960 (Peterborough replaced them) and even a bold application to join the Scottish League came to nothing. After the rises and falls of Gateshead Town and Gateshead United, the present club was built from the wreckage in 1977.

Obviously Newcastle is famously a ‘one-team city’ (and, yes, that aura was attractive to the new owners when they bought the Premier League outfit). And only the staunchest Heed fans would wish their cross-town neighbours true ill. But it would be remiss to ignore the rising presence of Gateshead FC.

Since their rebirth, Gateshead have battled through the Northern Premier League, won titles in the 1980s, returned to the Conference (now National League), and reached Wembley in 2014. Demoted in 2019 over off-field issues, they won National League North (2021–22) to bounce back, then lifted a first FA Trophy (2024) after finishing runners-up the year before. It’s all very Gateshead: knocked down, get back up.

They play at Gateshead International Stadium – built on reclaimed industrial land once home to Victorian chemical works. Since the 1970s it’s hosted world-class athletics (five world records and the Gateshead Games), rugby league, and rollicking concerts – and while it isn’t a quaint football ground, it has become a home the Heed Army can call their own.

The people in those seats are drawn from a community shaped by coal mining, shipbuilding, steel and heavy industry. Gateshead, just across the Tyne from Newcastle, has long been a town of grafters whose livelihoods were tied to the rivers and pits. Football here belongs to them – a badge for a place too often in the shadow of its bigger neighbour.

That badge used to be rooted in civic heraldry: the old goat’s head (a nod to the Venerable Bede’s ad caput capreae), the portcullis and gateway tower for the town’s name, waves for the Tyne, and crosses recalling Gateshead’s ancient place within the Palatinate of Durham. Today, the club crest carries a different guardian – one the whole world now recognises.

Unveiled in 1998, the Angel of the North is Antony Gormley’s colossal steel angel: 20 metres tall, 54-metre wingspan – wider than a Boeing 757 – seen by an estimated 33 million people a year from the A1, A167 and the East Coast Main Line. Built in COR-TEN weathering steel by Hartlepool Steel Fabrications, its vertical ribs act as an external skeleton, shedding ferocious North-East winds into deep concrete foundations. Gormley cast the figure from his own body; the wings tilt 3.5° forward for a sense of embrace. Crucially, it stands on the site of a former colliery: men once worked in darkness below; above ground, the Angel meets the light.

Commissioned by Gateshead Council, it was contested at first – derided as a “rusty monstrosity” – but it has become a loved landmark and a shorthand for the North East’s resilience and reinvention. It is now as much a part of Gateshead’s identity as the river bridges are to Tyneside.

Gateshead are here to stay – and they’re not a million miles off the EFL, which would make Newcastle, whisper it, a two-team city. If you want the romance: the club’s badge is the Angel because football here, like the town itself, has risen from hardship to stand tall, arms outstretched, guarding the people of Tyneside.