TRURO — It is Friday night in The Old Ale House in Truro and a group of six football supporters and I, all a long way from home, talk mainly about the bad times of Gateshead FC but intersperse it with their glorious memories of Wembley to bump up the mood.
We are stood around a large table upstairs because we were asked to leave a speed dating event in a section of the pub after accidentally barging in. Lots of men with name badges quaked in their boots at the sight of the elite-level competition.
The six supporters are Josh, Lee, Paul, Sean, Steve and Stu. Lee is the youngest at 27. Most have regular jobs – bus driver, retail, train manager – although Stu and Steve are now retired.
They are connected by their love of, and dedication to, their football club. Some have not missed a Gateshead away match in years. Annual leave has repeatedly been pushed to the limit and beyond.
An exceptional trip
Even by normal standards, this is an exceptional trip; after all, it is why I am here. At 914 miles, Gateshead to Truro (and the reverse) is the longest away round journey in English league football history, made possible by Truro City’s promotion last season. They do them all, but this is the one they looked for last July.
Lee and Josh caught a train from Newcastle to London on Thursday and then took the overnight Riviera sleeper to Penzance. Sean did the same thing a day earlier to make a short holiday out of it. Stu came down from Newcastle by train on Friday. Paul drove down from Bromsgrove, Steve from Matlock. The last of them will get home on Sunday evening, approximately 100 hours after leaving.
I wanted this group to be my guide to this weekend because they represent something significant. All are members of the Gateshead FC supporters’ society – Lee is the joint-chair and Stu is on the board. The society is an official supporters’ trust, has a 20 per cent share in the club’s ownership and is represented at board level.
It makes a difference, not through slogan or intent but definitive action and because its club regularly needs it. Members pay a minimum of £10 a month and help out with wages, supporting travel or food for the players, paying for equipment. At this level, you see where the money goes.
That creates a familial atmosphere that you need during the bad times. At the end of every away match, the players shake hands with the supporters who routinely travel. This may only be a division away from the Football League, but the lack of separation between the layers of the club could not be more different.
The patience test
If there was any season to test your patience, it is this one.
Gateshead finished eighth in the National League last season, but in May a proposed takeover fell through, the club announced that they would struggle to fund another year, the chairman resigned and the club were banned from registering new players until July.
Until days before the Truro trip, Gateshead had lost 15 straight matches and most of this group were at every one of them. The Heed are bottom of the fifth tier.
There is something about your football club being routinely terrible on the pitch that can be liberating, so long as you take care not to allow anger and frustration to run wild.
The society and its members know only too well how hard life is for their club day to day, month to month, season to season. They share that burden and that is why the players and staff are so close to them.
A badge of honour
Following Gateshead home and away becomes a badge of honour. At Halifax Town the previous Tuesday, one of the shorter away trips, there were only 27 in the away end.
The group predict a deluge of daytrippers for Truro and do their best not to sound snide about that. Everyone is welcome, of course; it is just that this club needs more of them on the days when idiots like me roll into town.
Speaking to each of the group over beers, they tell me that the football is secondary anyway. It is about seeing each other, reinforcing a communal love that is expressed through that most British of languages: relentlessly taking the piss out of each other.
I ask about the bad times and there are enough to last all night: being voted out of the Football League in 1960 – “Even Newcastle went against us”; the dismal ownership of Dr Ranjan Varghese and his de facto kingmaker Joseph Cala, who should never have been allowed through the door; demotion to the sixth tier in 2019 due to financial irregularities; banned from the National League play-offs in 2024 due to insecurities over the agreement to remain a tenant of their stadium, owned by Gateshead Council.
But the worst of all, they agree? Covid. They travelled the country, supported their team and looked out for each other on what they hoped was an eternal loop and then it was ripped away for 18 months. They raise a glass to those who they lost then and since. Only a fortnight ago, David Robson passed away and he will be deeply missed.
The full Cornish experience
It is now 2pm on Saturday afternoon and home and away supporters mix in the Threemilestones Social Club near the Truro City Stadium. This would usually be reserved for home fans, but the length of the journey has extended an invitation.
There are still more than three hours until kick-off. Supporters in the Premier League and EFL know only too well that games can be routinely moved for live TV coverage, but this is a particularly egregious example. Gateshead manager Rob Elliot bemoans that his team will journey back by coach and arrive back in the north east at 6am on Sunday morning.
For supporters, it means an extra night away but most are looking at the bright side – “It’s like playing in Europe,” as one of the group jokes. We take photos, ignore the rugby on the TV, I turn down the offer of a pint from half a dozen people and we all stay out of the weather. It has rained for 52 straight days here so it is nice to get the full Cornish experience.
Paul “The Beard” has threaded through beads and the away colours into his facial hair and poses for his own photos. Gateshead fan Mark and his partner Christine have arrived; Mark is another staple of this core group. They all muse about the potential for another away win. The words “great escape” are muttered, but mainly through dark humour. Nobody has much hope but who needs hope when you have your friends?
In the away end, the predictions of a bumper crowd ring true: 157 is the exact number. Sky Bet hand out a free beer voucher at the gate and the pasties are being sold on a continuous loop to soak up the ale. The members of the society start in the stand but most quickly move to an unsheltered area behind the goal where they can exist in their natural habitat, a small band of the most loyal. I meet Dan Bell and Allan Hutchison and his daughter Victoria, all of whom deserve namechecks.
Goal of the season contender
The match itself is vaguely extraordinary in the context of Gateshead’s season. They are terrible for the first 20 minutes, score with their first shot and are then terrible again until half-time, by which point Truro have equalised and continue to dominate.
At the start of the second half, Truro are on top again as the rain falls and Lee concedes that his Gateshead training jacket, lovely as it is, was an insufficient top layer for February. A couple of the group head to the small smoking area to work through the nerves, a view of one sliver of the pitch that Gateshead rarely venture into to attack.
And then, on 55 minutes, Harry Chapman produces a wonderful spin turn on the left wing and just starts running. He drives past two more Truro players, dips his shoulder to go beyond a third and then curls a shot into the bottom corner.
Lee, Sean, Paul, Steve and Stu go wild and, yes, I find myself jumping too, mainly in astonishment. I ask Lee if this is Gateshead’s goal of the season and he actively – and rightly – laughs in my face. It is.
Gateshead somehow hold on, defending crosses into their area as if this is war. They survive six added minutes and then two more, for some reason. The covered away fans dance and shout and hug each other and, in their small group in the rain, my new friends do the same. Sean has taken his shirt off and is whirring it around his head. Gateshead are not bottom of the National League anymore, for now.
My verdict
Gateshead will probably still go down; back to the sixth tier again. There are a dozen problems, not least a home stadium they don’t own and was 95 per cent empty for its last league game. It is a deeply unideal solution that would take money to sort out that Gateshead simply don’t have. The focus is on keeping the lights on.
That is a wider issue brought into focus by one club. Most non-league clubs are routinely struggling without sugar daddies that don’t exist and the north east of England is suffering most because football is only ever a mirror of society in general. This should be a sad tale. It may still be.
But I have been here for two days and the two days are magical. I have been welcomed into a group of people that are intensely, wonderfully close-knit and yet treat me like a friend for life.
If there is one hope from all of this, and if this piece is to achieve anything at all, it is to urge every single Gateshead supporter, every person in the area who cares, to join the supporters’ society because they need your help and with you they can make a difference.
This group is a tiny window into English football but they represent its best; what they do is being replicated in a hundred or more different places and in each of them life-affirming, club-changing work is being done.
As I get back into the car at 8pm for my shorter, barely-worth-mentioning five-hour drive home, I am beyond delighted. These are the experiences that mean the most in the sport that means the most too.
Gateshead got a win that makes 462 miles home feel like the shortest step because they are finally walking on air. The guys from the society get to talk about a great escape for one more week. Even better news: it is three home games in a row next.
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