‘It feels like home’ – Newcastle United Women can make history and emulate rise of men’s team
Newcastle United Women are just four games away from making history.
The side have the chance to earn promotion to the second tier of the women's football pyramid for the first time.
After the men's team secured qualification for the Champions Leauge last season, the Magpies' women are on a roll in the National League - having only just won promotion from the tier below last season.
But they now have the chance to get themselves within touching distance of playing with the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City.
They currently sit top of the Women's National League Northern Premier Division, 12 points ahead of their nearest rivals Nottingham Forest.
The winning side of their league will gain promotion to the Championship.
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If that team is Newcastle, then they will be just one good season away from a potential promotion to the Women's Super League.
It would be a first ever Championship promotion for the Magpies, but not they are no strangers to making history in recent years.
After turning professional in 2023, they became the first professional side to compete in the women's third tier in England.
And nothing sums up the trailblazing spirit and determination of this team better their captain, Amber-Keegan Stobbs.
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The 31-year-old has played nine clubs across the NWSL, the WSL, the Women's Championship and the Women's National League during her senior career - but admits that Newcastle given her more fulfilment than any of them since joining in the summer.
Stobbs came through the ranks of Arsenal's youth system together with our very own talkSPORT's Women's Football Show presenter and ex-Lioness, Lianne Sanderson.
Speaking to Sanderson on the show, Stobbs admitted that her approach to football was much different playing for Newcastle than it had been at many of her previous clubs.
She said: "Initially, when I was younger it would have been like an obsession. Just football, loving it, trying to get to a certain level and do what I can and achieve things. But I stepped away from the game for a year...and now, I just play football because I love it. Just pure love it.
"I play with a different mindset, I'm a different character now. I just love football - I love sports. It brings people together and I know that sounds cliché. But there's no time in my life when my brain is quiet - and I'm not saying that in a game my brain is quiet - but I'm in the zone.
"Nothing gets me more focused than football. Again another cliché, but creating memories with people and being in a team and now I feel like I am in the peak of my existence. And I don't mean that achievement-wise, but I just mean that it's amazing to be at Newcastle."
But Stobbs' journey to this point has been a difficult one.
After a particularly difficult period in her life, the midfielder made the decision to take time out of her football career.
She old talkSPORT that though it was a hard decision, she knows now that it was undoubtedly the right one.
She said: "I was really struggling for years. I've been at a lot of clubs - that is genuinely down to the infrastructure behind women's football and it not being stable enough at clubs.
"Like for instance at (Crystal) Palace, I really liked my two seasons at Palace, but then the next year they said we were going hybrid and we're training on Fridays. It was four evenings a week and one of them was a Friday and you've got to be there at 5:30 - and I had a job in London, so it was just balancing that."
"I think that made it hard back then, to have that battle and to find the perfect place to be. I struggled massively with mental health over the years and I actually got to a point where I was like if I don't step away now, I'm in trouble. It's raw to say, but I was like the only thing I haven't done in life is step away from football."
"I don't know if I had the wrong identity - like I said, it was an obsession before. But I got unhealthy whether it was eating obsession, training, just really negative self-talk - like you haven't done anything in your career, you need to do better - that sort of stuff. And I just thought I am mentally battering myself here and I need to just step away."
Stobbs moved back home and she described how she struggled with anxiety and depression for many years.
But the break from football benefited her and over time, her mindset began to change as she came to see the place of football in her life differently.
She said: "I started to be like I'm Amber and I'm a footballer - not Amber the footballer. And that massively helped me. It's just got me to the best place mentally and life-wise.
"I'll be playing for I don't know how many more years, but I know that when I step away I'll be in the right place to and I'm not worried about the identity thing that I know some people struggle with."
Now, captaining the Magpies as they look to do what the side have never managed to do before, Stobbs believes she has found the club that gives her exactly what she needs, both as a player and as a person.
She admitted that signing for Newcastle in July 2023 had been nothing short of a 'dream'.
She said: "I always wanted to live in the north, but I thought I'll do it when the time is right. And then a couple of years ago the women's time got a bit more back in, started doing well. It wasn't the fact that they were doing well that made me want to move there, not like I wanted to jump on the bandwagon or anything.
"I actually spoke to (Newcastle) manager Becky Langley the summer before and it was very close to happening. But they were still part-time and it was the fact of quitting my job in London and moving up and finding a job. It was the hardest no I'd ever said - I was crying on the phone saying no to Becky."
But Stobbs, who at the time was playing for current Championship side Lewes FC, never lost sight of her Newcastle ambitions.
And there was one particular moment which convinced her beyond all doubt of where her footballing future lay.
"I was at St James' Park for one of the last men's games of the season...and then they announced that the women had won promotion." she said. "And I was ready to move to Newcastle whether they'd won promotion or not, but the whole stadium went mad - which was class."
"And I just looked at my mate and I was like: 'It's happening. I'm going to move here.' So then we got talking again, me and Becky and it was just absolutely right from the start. Such a good person to work with,
"I had such an emotional month or two months because I was like it all makes sense to me. Another cliché, but I was like these are the reasons that I am still here."
Newcastle narrowly missed out on lifting the Women's National League Cup earlier this month after Hashtag United came back to defeat them 2-1.
But their sights are now firmly set on a promotion which would make their season a resounding success.
Newcastle have just four league fixtures left to play as they go up against Liverpool Feds, Huddersfield Town, Halifax and West Bromwich Albion before the end of the season.
If they are able to retain their healthy lead at the top of the National League, North Division then they will earn a coveted promotion to the Championship.
And while Stobbs is determined to do all she can to ensure her club take that all-important step closer to the WSL, the newfound solidarity she has with her club is an achievement to cherish in itself.
She said: "I've always been chasing something in my career and thinking 'have I underachieved?' People say 'You've played in the WSL', but I didn't enjoy that year at all.
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"But now, it makes sense. I've played this long, and jumped and jumped from club to club and gone through all these battles so I could be in the north at Newcastle. And it genuinely feels like home."
You can tune into talkSPORT's Women's Football Show on Mondays from 7pm on talkSPORT 2.