For a club that has been wound up, relegated on paper, locked out of its own ground and rebuilt more times than anyone at the International Stadium cares to count, walking out at Wembley as FA Trophy winners was a proper piece of North East football history. Gateshead had lost the 2023 final and been denied a National League play-off place they’d earned on the pitch — twelve months later, in front of 19,964 at Wembley, Rob Elliot’s side went back and finished the job in his first months in the job after taking over from Mike Williamson.

It was the Heed who edged the first half, and just before the break Joe Grayson lofted a ball for Dajaune Brown to square across the six-yard box, where Regan Booty slid it home to send the black-and-white end behind the goal into raptures. Solihull Moors, only six days on from their own play-off final defeat, came out stronger after half time and Mark Beck rose to head in Joe Newton’s cross to level. Beck then put the Moors ahead from the spot in extra time, and with 15 minutes to save it, Gateshead threw men forward.

The equaliser came on 110 minutes: Booty’s swerving ball to the back post, a knock-down from Tom Allan, and Brown side-footed into an empty net to force penalties. In the shootout the goalkeepers took over — Nick Hayes and James Montgomery both saving early — and it went to sudden death. Fittingly it was Dajaune Brown, in what turned out to be his last game for the club, who stepped up to slot home the winner and lift Gateshead’s first-ever FA Trophy at the third Wembley attempt.

For a fan base that has watched this club climb from the Northern League back to the top of non-league, it was the biggest day since the FA Cup quarter-final of 1953. The programme from the final is already becoming one of the most collected non-league items of the decade — and a fitting bookend to the Heed’s long march back.

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