GROUNDHOPPING

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive discusses his trips to see the Gulls

A Saturday and Tuesday double-header. Hampshire at the weekend and Jane Austen’s old stomping ground in midweek. Two pretty attractive trips for the reinvigorated Yellow Army.

FARNBOROUGH (A)

Farnborough was fun, albeit a 1-0 defeat showed up my predictive skills for the smoking ruin that they have now become.

It was a latish start for the nine of us on the 9.05. That first train was a Paddington service too long for the Torre platform. Attempts to keep the rail fares affordable meant that we had to dismount at Exeter for a 40 minute wait for the Waterloo service.

It had dawned on the more enthusiastic imbibers that we were not in fact due to arrive at Farnborough early enough for a pub crawl and that a rash decision not to bring any beer onboard was in need of urgent review. Matty therefore departed in search of some cans whilst I joined the queue in Starbucks.

Seattle’s best known non-Boeing export always poses a dilemma for me. The company is famously inventive in its attempts to avoid paying tax in the UK, and I was horrified to learn from my sister-in-law recently that they are also donors to Donald Trump’s election campaign. Having said that, I think their latte tastes slightly better than Costa and there is always fun to be had making up silly names for them to write on my non-reusable coffee cup. Saturday’s choice was: “Bryn”, mainly because it was time to move on from “Asa” and “Jude”.

The good thing about boarding a Waterloo train at St David’s is that you’re first on, and that the seats are unreserved. There’s normally plenty of room. Not so on Saturday though, because the logistical geniuses of Southwestern Trains had decided to put a three-coach unit on a summer Saturday train from the Westcountry. There was a kerfuffle when a severely autistic teenage girl became very distressed that she and her Mum might not be able to sit in the exact two seats that she would be comfortable in. We did the decent thing and moved. My heart goes out to both ladies- Mum in particular- her life must be very tough.

So, glowing with righteousness, we settled in for a single track ride with steady girlfriends Stella and Thatcher. A quick change at Basingstoke and we rolled into Farnborough at about 1.30.

I nearly forgot to mention today’s quiz question:

“What is the only railway station in the UK with dark sky status?”

If you thought it might be somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, the middle of Norfolk or the Peak District you definitely need to give your head a wobble, because the answer is none other than the somewhat underwhelming Tisbury in Wiltshire. I expect they got Paul Tisdale or Matt Le Tissier to unveil the sign. It certainly makes you think….

We rang a taxi from the station. Ten minutes waiting established beyond any reasonable doubt that Farnborough isn’t a football town. The controller asked “which football ground” when Matty told her where we wanted to go, and a hi-viz wearing car park attendant guessed wrongly that our group would probably be wanting to go to the Farnborough Motor Show.

Thankfully, we were soon amongst our tribe. Cherrywood Road is a decent football ground. Three sides are pretty unremarkable terracing with a small main stand, and behind one goal there is a more substantial affair.

Beers continued to flow, and it was great to meet many of our regulars like Tom Kelly and Chris Wade. I also met a guy from Swindon, Ian, who remembered me from a conversation we had had back in February. He despised the previous owner every much as I did, but it hadn’t stopped him from going to Plainmoor for every home match. Hello Ian: I don’t think I gave you a shout out last time- it was great to see you again.

Mr Chairman Michael Westcott was also doing his rounds, continuing to make friends wherever he goes after making his debut on the Travel Club coach and instantly winning hearts and minds with a bacon sandwich order that would have made Cyril Smith blush. Neil Warnock was also patrolling the touchline in jacket and brogues, shaking hands, having selfies and very much Being Neil Warnock. He warned us that it wouldn’t be an easy afternoon on the pitch.

Sadly, the boy still knows his onions. Farnborough took the honours with a tight but probably deserved 1-0 win.

I watched the first half with my old mate Mark. We perched in the stand behind the goal. He correctly predicted the half time withdrawal of The Moose and I was so fed up with the accuracy of his crystal ball that I took myself down the other end for the second half.

It was “bins to the left of me, drummers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you”. There was never a hint of trouble inside the ground, although a disappointing refereeing decision did see a red wheelie bin bear the brunt of some late away supporter frustration.

There was, sadly, an incident outside the ground which I did not see but which I am reliably informed involved a home fan dishing out some stick from his car only to get stuck in traffic a few yards down the road and to take a bit of a beating from some fans we could probably do without. It’s not big and it’s not clever, although none of us were unable to resist the comparison with “that Bus Wankers bit from The Inbetweeners”.’

The journey home was high spirited. Thanks to Freya for kindly giving us a lift to the station via the biggest Sainsbury I have ever seen! One enjoyable episode involved Matty and I talking to a Portsmouth fan. The whole carriage knew that we were going to drop the Billy Bodin Bomb and it hit home with unerring accuracy.

BATH CITY (A)

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Apart from the aqueduct, Cody Cooke, Dan Hayfield and Public Health.

Well, three points on Tuesday night was handy too.

It wasn’t the easiest of journeys. I was behind the wheel for this one, and it was a good job we gave ourselves 4 hours to get there. A “several car pile up” meant that we spent an hour snarled in a traffic jam on that big, curving bridge that carries the baby M5 over Exminster and Topsham.

One thing the actual Romans don’t appear to have done is build any decent roads in a south westerly direction, because leaving the motorway at Junction 22 we found ourselves driving up the longest country lane in England. Pretty though some of the villages are and lovely though the softening evening light was, getting to Bath cross-country is not a quick journey.

But we arrived in plenty of time and after a bit I did stop moaning for a short while.

I parked down by the railway arches, where Aquae Sulis meets Phil Mitchell, and we walked up “scary lane” to find The Crown pub already heaving with Torquay fans.

A beer garden pint in the shadow of the Twerton Park floodlights was a nice way to relax into the evening and sharpen the banter a little.

There were more Lardners than you could shake a stick at, and much confusion on my part about their sleeping arrangements.

Tom Diamond was there with his Burundi flag, already building his repertoire of: “What happens when you answer the phone for Talk Sport” stories. He’s clearly loving every minute, and the job seems to require an approach which is three parts Samaritan to one part Chris Sutton.

Speaking of Burundi flags, once I had walked up the slope to the ground I was accosted by Jules Nixon, who was draped in his. But that wasn’t the most striking part of his midweek outfit. He was sporting an extraordinary shirt and shorts combo decorated with lollies and ice cream! If you can picture the advertising menu in an ice cream van window, that was the garb.

Torquay needed to be alert too, because it is nearly 17 years since our last win at Twerton and the lads were coming off a disappointing defeat at Farnborough.

Luckily, our policy of making local footballers offers they can’t refuse came good, with Bath old boy Cody Cooke burying an early chance to settle us down.

I buried a very decent double cheeseburger and went back for more before half time, which allowed an opportunity to join in with the ridicule of an elderly linesman, who was having the worst night with his flag since the BBC infamously asked him to use semaphore to announce the Sri Lankan cricket team.

Despite Ed Palmer’s header (man, I love a set-piece goal) the game was never properly put to bed, and I was as nervous as everyone else as we had to dig in to thwart a home comeback.

But it worked out OK in the end. The Lardners went their separate ways, the lino went home to tell his wife he’d had another stinker and Matty, Josh and I narrowly survived becoming road death statistics as we came home via the M4: that was one of my better ideas.

As my head hit the pillow at half past midnight, I drifted off to dream of Richard Nixon singing “Just One Cornetto” whilst Omar Mussa wept quietly into his birthday cake. He’ll be back.