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Post season catch up

Date: Wednesday 5th May 2010, by Tynesider

Gateshead have completed the appointments to their backroom staff. With Jeff Wrightson and Paul Thompson unable to take up full-time roles, former Newcastle Academy Director Adam Sadler becomes Bogie's right-hand man, and Gateshead College's Football Head Coach Paul Bryson becomes Reserve Team Manager.

Sadler joins the club on a full-time basis to work day in day out with Ian Bogie and the squad. Contrary to popular belief he hasn't made any dodgy Hollywood films, instead he started his career as a young goalkeeper at Newcastle United before moving onto Manchester United, Barnsley and Gretna. Injury curtailed his playing career, so he turned his hand to coaching. Taking up a role at Newcastle's academy, he became goalkeeping coach and then reserve team manager. He briefly moved onto to Norwich to become 1st team coach to Glenn Roeder before moving back to the area following Roeders sacking. Taking up the role as Assistant manager to Mick Tait at them up the road, he then traded up by joining Northumbria University and taking the reins of Team Northumbria in the Northern League. Sadler holds the full UEFA pro licence.

Bryson will work part-time as coach of the Reserve Team and on match-days as a 1st team coach. Being Head Coach of Gateshead College's Football Academy, coach of England College's Under 19's and working at Sunderland Academy with the under 12's to 16's. Bryson was a midfielder who played Conference football for Gateshead in the mid '80s, before moving onto the likes of Spennymoor and Dunston Fed amongst others. As a coach he's led Gateshead College to 14 trophies including winning this season's English College's National Championships. Bryson will continue at Gateshead College, but has given up his role as English Colleges coach and at Sunderland Academy to join Gateshead FC.

Chairman & Vice Chairman on Grassroots Sports show

Both Graham Wood and Brian Waites appeared on NE1FM's Grassroots Sports to talk everything Gateshead FC. Here's a summary of goings on, including information from the show:

Pre-season. The age old probem of booking the International Stadium for home pre-season friendlies (due to the Summer athletics) has raised it's ugly head again. Bearing in mind that bigger teams will only travel to smaller clubs for friendlies, the club had hoped to get a team such as Hearts or Hibs down here. Unfortunately, that's looking unlikely due to the only available Saturday (at home) being July 24th and with the Scottish Premier League starting earlier than down here, by that time they'll be looking to step up the calibre of opposition they play. It's highly likely we'll open up pre-season at one of the better Northern League teams such as Spenny/Whitley, then step up the opposition with a few away trips against teams such as Queen of the South and possibly Leeds United at home in mid-week.

Squad. Contracts have been offered to 15 of the squad that ended the season. The club are looking to run a 22 man squad, so that means Bogie and his team shall be looking to bring in 7 or 8 new players (Assuming all current agree to the tabled offers). From the sounds of it, the entire squad will be full-time with no part-time players. Rumours have one or two players going due to their full-time work commitments, with others giving up the day job to live the dream as a professional footballer.

Reserves & Gateshead College link-up. With the dual role of Paul Bryson, the reserve team shall be made up of a mixture of fringe first team players and Gateshead College players. Both teams (Gateshead & the College) will be training day in day out on Gateshead Stadium's back pitches. This will make for the ideal environment to cross-over College players with the first team, not to mention Gateshead being able to utilise the sport science and training facilities at the College's Academy for Sport. It is envisaged that players developed in the Gateshead FC Juniors setup can move onto scholarships at Gateshead College, before progressing to the 1st team. The reserve side should also allow the club to trial players at a high level and look at opposition players from the likes of Leeds and Middlesbrough, whilst also aiding fringe players to stay match fit.

Community Programme. With the players and staff going full-time, the club will be looking to extend beyond their current community coaching programme and go into the schools inconjunction with Gateshead College to foster links with the local public.

New Stadium. As mentioned last-week Gateshead's proposed new stadium on Prince Consort Road won't be arriving as quickly as all Heed fans hoped. The current position is that the club are close to finalising the planning application, with planning consultants and the architects working on this. The delay has been due to various reasons with the most recent being that the planners requested the addition of a visual impact survey.

The timescale once the planning application has been submitted (assuming everything goes through smoothly) is now 16 weeks, with the hope of submitting the application around the end of June/beginning of July to start building in October 2010. With an estimated 9 month construction phase, completion at the earliest would be towards the end of July 2011, meaning it would likely be too tight a timescale to move in for the start of the 2011/2012 season. At this point it's unsure whether the club would opt to move in halfway through the 2011/12 campaign (upon completeion) or look to move in for the start of the 2012/2013 season, with the stated reason being that moving in part-way through a season doesn't have the same grand impact it does for the beginning of a new season (Big stadium opening match in pre-season).

The initial public consutation back in October 2009 returned 77% of local residents who attended in favour of the new ground, but the club also listened to those against and have altered their plans accordingly, such as moving the Main Stand to the East side of the ground away from the houses. The Main Stand (East/PCR side), will have four floors with the ground floor being almost entirely for use by the football club. The first floor will be offices and conference rooms and the second and third floors will be the lettable business space. The types of businesses they've been in discussions with for the top two floors are mainly medical related, discussions have been held with a lot of the GP practices around the area (20 different GPs being interested), along with opticians, dentists and cryogenics businesses. The club also intend to donate space for community use too.

Away fans will be situated in the South Stand, with a small proportion of away seats being available in the south side of the West Stand. This means the clothesline fans will be moved to the North Stand of the new ground, that's the end next to the bowling green nearest the Tyne & Gateshead Metro Interchange.

With both the East (Main) Stand and West Stand now seated, leaving the North and South Stands as terraces, the total capacity of the new ground will be 7,856.

Tickets. Season tickets prices for next season are: Adult (16 and over): £265, Concessions (OAP, Students, Unaccompanied under-16s): £150, Under-16s accompanied by a full price Adult: FREE.  Season ticket holders get free entry to all home totesport.com reserve team matches. Click here to purchase online...

Pay on the day prices are: Adult (16 and over): £13, Concessions (OAP, Students, Unaccompanied under-16s): £8, Under-16s accompanied by a full price Adult: FREE.

Totesport.com Central League Reserve Team match prices are: Adult (16 and over): £3, Concessions (OAP, Students, under-16s): £1.

Supporters Club. A meeting has been arranged between representatives of the supporters club and GFC, with the intention of reiventing the supporters club. Looking at the SC doing things in a slightly different way, to come up with certain objectives and initiatives to promote greater membership and therefore greater support of the Football Club. Both would like more fans to get involved, and if you you're interested please get in touch with the supporters club.

Break Even. In the the Conference at the new stadium we could be self-sufficient with a 1,500 crowd. In the Football League at the new stadium it would be about a 2,000 average attendance to break even.