football rambles

Top: The teams line up Middle: Gateshead corner in the first half Bottom: Histon take a corner

We finally made it to a Histon home game yesterday and it was a lot easier to get to than I had predicted and as the bus wasn't as crowded as getting back into town as from a Cambride United game after. The sun was shining for the first time this year, but it seems like the storm clouds might be starting to descend over Histon. Out have gone the money bags chairman, out has gone Steve Fallon, who guided the team to 5 promotions a third place finish in the Conference and a decent FA Cup run, which included a win over Leeds (for ayone who might have forgotten). In place is now Andrew Lewer, who obviously has some financial constraints, but banning 5 of the senior players from the game yesterday while they sort out contracts seems a little odd. Histon therefore fielded a fairly young team against Gateshead and where as this time last year Histon were top of the Conference with Burton and Gateshead were in the division below both teams seemed fairly well matched. Histon are now placed ...

On Saturday me and Sean went to Cambridge United v Gateshead and apart from spending an arm and a leg it was a great day out, unfortunately I forgot my camera, so there are no pictures to go with this report. Cambridge United won the game easily with the young centre forward Chris Holroyd providing the heroics scoring a splendid goal 5 minutes before the break and a penalty in the last minute. His performances this season have been impressive enough for him to get a call up for the England C squad. Gateshead looked out of their depth for much of the match and the consecutive promotions, including last season's play-off victory might mean that they have bitten off more than they can chew. It is still early on in the season, but it would appear that their best hopes of staying up are for another club to implode, as Chester with their 25 point deduction and Forest Green Rovers with their incredibly poor form look set for the drop and even this early on it seems that Gateshead might jo...

Gateshead will play Cambridge at the shabby Abbey today and they certainly are a club with a chequered and interesting history. The original Gateshead Football Club started life in Division 3 North in 1930 when South Shields folded, and they got off to a good start, in their second season they narrowly missed out on promotion to Lincoln City. However, they did miss out and then stabilised their position in Division 3 North. Their finest moment probably came in 1953 when they reached the quarter finals of the FA Cup, narrowly losing 1-0 to a Nat Lofthouse goal for Bolton, after they had already beaten Liverpool in the 3rd round. In 1958 Gateshead found themselves in the newly formed fourth division, after missing out on a place in the 3rd division by only one point. Just 2 years later they failed in an attempt to apply for re-election and were booted out of the league. They lost their place to Peterborough United in a move that seemed to have a lot more to do with their geographical dis...