DWIGHT Gayle is the leading scorer in the Championship, but a little over five years ago, he was plying his trade in the ninth tier of English football with Stansted FC. Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson sat down with the Newcastle United striker and discussed his unusual route to the top of the game


A COUPLE of months ago, Dwight Gayle was driving through Gateshead when he was forced to do a double take. Stopping his car outside the UTS Stadium, the home of Northern League side Dunston UTS, he pulled up on the side of the road, walked onto the pavement and took some photographs of the 4,000-capacity ground on his phone.

Why? Because for all that he has achieved since joining Newcastle United in the summer, and for all that he will be heading into this afternoon’s game with Blackburn Rovers as the leading goalscorer in the Championship, Dunston played an integral role in Gayle’s footballing development.

Back in February 2011, playing against the North-East non-league club represented the pinnacle of the Londoner’s career.

Having spent his earliest years playing for Ridgeway Rovers, the same East London boys’ club that was the breeding ground for David Beckham, Andros Townsend and Harry Kane, Gayle’s hopes of making it as a professional footballer looked to have been shattered when he was released from Arsenal’s academy at the age of 13.

He found himself playing in the ninth tier of the English game with Essex Senior League side Stansted, and encountered Dunston in the last 16 of the FA Vase. Gayle missed an early sitter, Dunston won 2-0, and the striker was glad to see the back of the team from Tyneside. Five-and-a-half years on, and it is safe to say that things have changed.

“That was my first taste of playing against a team from the North-East,” said Gayle, whose chief memory of his time at Stansted was his starring role in a 9-1 league win. “We played against Dunston down at our ground at Stansted, and it was a real eye opener. Even today, I remember the game well. They bullied us out of the game really.

“A couple of months ago, I was out driving and I went past Dunston’s ground. I stopped the car, got out and took a few photos, and sent the pictures to my old manager saying, ‘Do you remember these?’ They bullied us that day and neither of us have really forgotten.”

Despite all that he has done since, Gayle has not forgotten much about his formative footballing days. Jamie Vardy and Charlie Austin have been lauded for climbing from the non-league game to the very highest level, but Gayle’s tale is every bit as remarkable and serves as a salutary reminder that the academy system is not the only route to the top.

Following his release from Arsenal, he spent two seasons playing with Stansted, scoring 57 goals in the 2010-11 campaign. At the same time, he was working his with father, Devon, a well-known former player in the Essex leagues, as a carpenter.

Unsurprisingly, his goalscoring feats on the non-league stage did not go unnoticed, and when he was offered a professional contract at League Two side Dagenham & Redbridge, his fortunes appeared to have taken a turn for the better. The only problem? The £150-a-week he was offered by the Daggers was less than he was earning through carpentry.

“If I’m being totally honest, I’d pretty much given up on turning pro,” he said. “I don’t think I’d totally given up on the dream, but I’d accepted that it probably wasn’t going to happen. I was playing for the enjoyment at that stage, and to be fair, after a tough few years, I really started to love playing football again.

“I was working with my dad as a carpenter – he’d been a player at a similar level to where I started in the Essex Senior League – and he was great with me. He was always very flexible, and if I ever needed to work on Saturday, he’d always let me go off in plenty of time to play my football.

“He helped me massively. When I first signed at Dagenham, I was on less than I was on at work, and at first I wasn’t going to sign. I said, ‘Nah, I’m not going to bother, I’m just going to continue working with you dad’. But he said, ‘I’ll give you an extra bit of money to make up the difference’. That persuaded me to sign.”

Even then though, the glitz and glamour of the top two divisions remained a long way off. Dagenham boss John Still had doubts about Gayle’s ability to cope with the physical demands of League Two – “he was slight, he was small” – and sent him on loan to Bishop’s Stortford in the Conference North.

Gayle scored 42 goals during his loan spell, including four hat-tricks, and within three months of returning to Dagenham, he was back out on loan again. This time though, the destination was somewhat different.

“I think the moment it all changed was when I went to Peterborough,” he said. “I remember finding out that I was going there on loan, and I was shocked really. That was the big step for me.

“I thought I was doing alright at Dagenham, but I didn’t even think I was doing that great there. But suddenly I was getting a chance in the Championship, and instead of playing in front of 2,000 at Dagenham, I was suddenly playing front of 15 or 20,000. That was the big change for me and the moment I could tell things were really changing.”

A permanent move to Peterborough quickly followed, and after just 20 appearances for the Championship side, he was stepping up again in a £6m move to Crystal Palace. Things didn’t really work out at Selhurst Park, with first Tony Pulis and then Alan Pardew having reservations about his ability to lead the line in the top-flight.

Pardew started playing Gayle on the flank, and decided Christian Benteke’s physical attributes were more to his liking. Palace’s loss was undoubtedly Newcastle’s gain, and Gayle’s 13 Championship goals are a key reason why the Magpies will kick off this afternoon’s game with a five-point lead at the top of the table.

The 25-year-old has scored nine goals in his last six Championship matches – “it’s easily the best run of my career, unless you count Stansted” – but remains grounded because he knows how far he has come, and how easy it would be to return.

He might have been involved in some unsavoury tabloid headlines earlier this month when he was the victim of an alleged attack in a Liverpool nightclub – “the papers made a lot of that, but pretty much everything they said didn’t happen” – but this is no flashy footballer desperate to flaunt his fame and finances.

Gayle still remembers how to hang a door or fit a skirting board, and his experiences from five or six years ago continue to colour the way he lives his life.

“It definitely makes you appreciate things more,” he said. “I was working for a lot of years before I turned professional, and that experience makes you understand a bit more about life.

“Maybe I appreciate things a bit more now. Just coming from the pitches I used to play on, and the freezing cold nights when you could barely feel your feet, you have a special kind of feeling about what you’ve got now.

“Every time I come in to training, I’m buzzing about being able to use facilities like this. It makes you so happy to come into work every day, and playing in front of 52,000 people is a bit of a dream come true. When I was starting out, I was lucky if I was playing in front of 500. They were still good days though!”