GROUNDHOPPING

Clive Hayward

@Byehorse

CHELMSFORD (A)

We may have been expecting too much.

We wanted a pre-Christmas win, a bit of “Jingle Bells” and some dancing with Dillon De Silva.

We got a limp defeat, some “Goodbye Horse” and drinking with Charlie Baker.

By the time you read this it will probably be Twixmas, a time when you don’t really know what day it is and you have eaten and drunk your bodyweight several times over. This was a reasonable description of Matty and I when we got back to Newton Abbot on Saturday night. But I mustn’t get ahead of myself.

The journey up to London was uneventful. Our train wasn’t too busy, and our reserved seats allowed us to have a chat with an occasional Torquay watcher who was on his way to take advantage of some corporate hospitality at Tottenham. He had been to both Derby games last season but- lucky man- has only been tempted across the Plainmoor threshold a couple of times since. He reckoned to have played for Tiverton as a young man and, as is often the case these days, recalled playing on several of the grounds in our league and is now flabbergasted that Torquay are doing the same!

Great Western Trains did us- but not our new fwiend- a favour. He was perturbed to find his 8pm return service cancelled, but we hit the absolute Delay Repay sweet spot when a 15 minute delay into Paddington secured us a much appreciated refund on tickets that had been more at the Harrods end of the market than Trago.

One of the reasons I wanted to go on Saturday was that I had never been to Chelmsford before. It’s one of the bigger places in the UK I’ve never been to. Granted it’s no Norwich, let alone an Aberdeen, but as we later discovered (the miles fly by when you’re googling this stuff) it is home to 122,000 souls- many of whom were out and about in it’s bustling city centre but very few of whom could be bothered to go to the football. Actually, my motivation to explore didn’t survive first contact with the Old Plough- a pub by the station which was showing West Ham v Man Utd and- for the connoisseur- Leeds’ 4-0 demolition of Ipswich Town.

There was a Hammers theme running through the whole day. As Michael Portillo would tell you, there’s a good view of the Olympic Stadium from the train out of Liverpool Street. It is now emblazoned with the Irons’ crest and they had probably just kicked off when we shimmied past. We had to google the next bit, which was: “What Olympic Sports took place at ‘The Pringle?’” I went for cycling. Matty thought maybe swimming. It was a rare victory for the old man. Somewhere from the depths of the disused barn that is my memory I also remembered that I had heard “Chadwell Heath” before somewhere. “Something to do with West Ham? Yes- got it! It’s West Ham’s training ground”. The Hammers thread continued unabated as we walked past some very impressive nets designed to stop them smashing into lower league midfielders at The Melbourne Stadium, an athletics track masquerading as a sensible place to play football. Torquay didn’t exactly get hammered in our 2-0 defeat but everyone on the train home did!

What else?

Well- John Cadigan stopped for a chat and shares many people’s concerns about the “fans forum” video last week. His mate Charlie has dispensed with his beard and is writing a new comedy show- but he reckons that could take him a year. He was nice enough to buy us a pint in the Chelmsford clubhouse. A little bit of comedy gold there, as he instantly critiqued my floppy plastic pint of Guinness: “Cor- that’s just like they do it in Killarney innit”. The bloke is just funny.

Josh, George and their girlfriends did us a massive favour letting us jump into their taxi back to the station and we laughed in the face of tricky connections making use of the bright, shiny new Elizabeth line train back from Stratford to Paddington.

If I told you Ricky Aguiar walked through our carriage you’d never believe me.

He definitely had the same haircut though.