Dunston UTS defeat was the 'turning point' in Hebburn Town's shock title win - Robert Briggs

Midfielder Robert Briggs believes a shock FA Trophy defeat at North East neighbours Dunston UTS inspired Hebburn Town’s historic Northern Premier League title win and promotion into the National League North.

The Hornets had made a slow start to the season and were sitting in the bottom half of the NPL Premier Division table prior to a Friday night visit to the UTS Stadium. Although they were favourites to come through a first round tie against a Dunston side sitting one level lower in the non-league system, Daniel Moore’s men were humbled as a stunning first-half goal from Wil Shaw sent them out of the competition.

Far from being negatively impacted by the shock loss, Briggs and his team-mates used it as extra motivation to improve and some ‘home truths’ spoken in the hours after the full-time whistle inspired a run of just two defeats in their following 27 games as the Hornets secured a remarkable promotion to join South Shields in step two.

Reflecting on that defeat at Dunston, Briggs told The Gazette: “When I first joined, the club were sixteenth in the league but when I weighed up options and spoke to the gaffer, their plan was always to push for the play-offs but at the time they didn’t have a big squad. There were always some really good players so the aim was the play-offs - but then we lost at Dunston in the FA Trophy and that was a real shock and we had to have a real talk about what we actually wanted.

“We spoke about how we could do something special and that took us on a brilliant run and gave us the motivation to really push on and win the league. We only lost two games after that and that’s a great achievement - but the Dunston game was pivotal because there were a lot of home truths spoken because we knew we had the players and staff to do it and everyone had a different focus.”

Mentality

For Briggs, there was a mentality shift from his long stint with South Shields, where title pushes and promotion bids became commonplace as the Mariners rose up the non-league pyramid. Ranked as outsiders in their own bid for a historic promotion, Hebburn benefited from the attention going on title rivals FC United of Manchester and Hednesford Town and Briggs believes that inspired a mentality that took his side all of the way to the National League North.

He said: “Being at South Shields, I was used to being under pressure to win the league and I think everyone just expected us to be there or thereabouts really. But the pressure wasn’t on us at Hebburn, it was on Hednesford and FC United because they had the budget, they had the expectation of winning the league. We had no pressure, it helped us, but we all kept our feet on the ground and every game just became another game. It was a remarkable achievement for us but that mentality helped us massively.”

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