Proud club is brought to its knees

AS a former owner of a grand little football club called Gateshead, what is happening to them has both infuriated and sickened me.

It feels like they have been stripped bare of every single attribute bar pride on the field of play.

Those who have run this former Football League outpost into the current mess need to look in the mirror.

They will not like what they see.

Players have been sold apparently behind the manager’s back in one case - until all that is left is a threadbare squad of 15 souls who have travelled to Dover, never mind London, on the day of the game and somehow still won!

Officials like long-term servant Mike Coulson, who I brought into the club, have bailed out and so has the original manager Steve Watson.

While Gateshead have staggered on under a transfer embargo having survived a winding-up order over a £20,223.61 unpaid tax bill.

It has all become so bad fans have held a protest meeting to vent their desperate frustration.

Now Gateshead has been put up for sale . . . less than a year after the current powerbrokers moved in amid more sweet promises than a Valentine’s Day love song.

Regardless of things perhaps catching up with Gateshead on the final run-in to a truly tumultuous season, the fact remains last weekend, after a Grand National course of 37 fixtures, the club were somehow clinging on to a play-off position for promotion to the Football League - when by all things sane they ought to be on the brink of relegation.

That being so, I believe a joint Manager of the Year award ought to be handed right now to Steve Watson and current guardian Ben Clark.

Defiant heroes both. What ought to be dispensed elsewhere inside the International Stadium is quite another matter.