JUBILANT South Shields boss Gary Steadman hailed his players after they finally sealed promotion to Division One of the Northern League last night.

A 1-0 victory over fellow high-fliers Sunderland RCA in front of a bumper crowd at Filtrona Park was enough to start the celebrations.

Shields had gone into the game needing just a point, but for 75 minutes the outcome was on a knife edge.

But top scorer Mark Johnson settled the nerves by racing away to slot home what turned out to be the vital goal, and despite five minutes of injury time, Shields were never in any real danger of throwing promotion away.

The celebrations on the final whistle were a far cry from the dismay on Saturday, when the Mariners blew their first chance to seal promotion, losing 2-0 to Norton & Stockton.

Well done to them, after narrowly missing out at the end of last season.

Yep, always nice to see Shields do well. Just a shame about David Milliband being involved with the club

Cos that man's got his fingers in all the pies. Being Foreign Secretary is not enough.

Been a while since I bumped into him on the metro or shopping at Tesco haha.

Last time I saw him, he was at school with "random undercover members of MI5 strategically located around the hall"... Yeah. They blended in terribly well with the kids and teachers.