TT GROUNDHOPPING

Matty Hayward – @MattyHayward96

Matty discusses the away trip

WELLING (A)

In 1939, a thoughtful, pioneering Geordie gentleman called John Gregg had an idea: to make fresh bread and tasty treats affordable and available to the people of his fine city. Eighty five years, a world war, three PJ and Duncan studio albums, and a vegan sausage roll culture war later, the now nationally-renowned chain opened its newest branch: a small adjunct to a petrol garage in Stockport. Importantly – for this blog, and my cholesterol – this new branch happens to be on my road.

Naturally, then, yesterday’s trip to Welling began with a hastily-served, piping-hot bacon bap and a latte. Thanks for asking: red sauce. This came in at three pounds fifty five pence (total!!), around the same price as a coffee on its own from my usual pre-away-day haunt at Stockport Railway Station Starbucks. What Greggs lacks in ‘writing names on cups’ and tax evasion, it more than makes up for in value and quality. With this news, any hope I had for maintaining a healthy post-summer diet have been flushed violently down the pan.

The Pendolino to Euston allowed me two hours to get my teeth into the most recent Mercury Prize winning album by Leeds-based indie-band English Teacher. Completely irrationally, I’ve tried to ignore and avoid this group’s work, because I think it sounds horrifically lame to like a musical act that is named after your literal profession. It’s safe to say I’ve been missing out: though I would’ve liked to have seen the award go to CMAT, ‘This Could Be Texas’ is a record well worthy of the accolade.

It wasn’t long before I was on a tube to London Bridge, where I’d meet my first companion of the day. Capital-based pedagogue Tom Diamond was in sparkling form from the get-go, and after a bit of geographical ineptitude we found our way into a grand old boozer. A pint of Guinness with a Lincoln fan and a Hereford fan – with whom we discussed Torquay’s demise, Torquay’s recent uptick, and the merits of Lee Carsley – was more than enough to wet the whistle.

London Bridge station – definitely not the most obvious changing point for travelling Gulls fans – was absolutely teeming with Torquay. Sincerely, except for two Rotherham shirts, every travelling football fan we could identify was wearing some iteration of the famous yellow and blue.

On the third locomotive of the day, the Yellow Army gained its newest member. A Teignmouth-born school friend, The Doc, now also lives in the Big Smoke, and had never seen a Torquay match before yesterday. He reckons he’s not seen a game of live football in a decade. He entertained Tom and my attempts at choreographing the next Great Gulls Song, and told me afterwards that he thoroughly enjoyed the game. Makes one of us.

As the three of us stepped off the train we carried a flummoxed look and frantically tapped away at our phones in search of the designated pub. This was noticed by an extremely accommodating lady, who had something of the turn-of-the-millennium Kathy Beale about her. She enquired “looking for a pub lads?”

It turns out that our east-end tour guide was also a teacher and, before she chucked it in as a result of abuse on the side-lines, used to “run a youth team” at Welling. She was eager and proud to impress upon us that her boys had had great success under her leadership, including beating “John Terry’s Senrab” to the league and cup double.

Her advice was clear and thorough: “left here, then there are loads of good pubs up that road and if you carry on you’ll get to the ground”. Perfect. I noted that there was, in fact, a pub right in front of us. Again, her advice was clear and thorough “don’t bother with that: it’s an absolute shithole.” Clear. Thorough.

She wished us well and slunk into the Tesco Express. By this point, we’d caught up with Brighton-based, Seagull-fanatic Jack Albion and his colleagues. They were heading for the aforementioned shithole, so we heeded absolutely none of Wise Kathy’s advice and followed them in there.

Sure enough, it was an absolute shithole. But, crucially, it was full almost-exclusively of Torquay fans, many of whom had had a very early start (in more ways that one) on some cheap GWR tickets. Buoyed by a healthy dose of public-transport boozing and a bit more public-house boozing, the place was alight with singing Yellows songs old and new. I don’t think anyone, least of all The Doc, was expecting it to be quite so lairy. It was quite the baptism of fire for the boy. That said, everyone got along absolutely swimmingly. The one local welcomed us with open arms, congratulated us on the recent takeover, and I agreed with him that Welling would probably win.

We took the announcement of team news as a decent reason to make a move up the old Roman road to Canterbury and into the final pre-match pub. There, our group was once-again inflated by another school-friend, Gluten-Free Ben. GFB’s love for the Gulls was ignited by an almost psychotically misplaced faith in the potential of Billy Bodin, a fire which he is yet to douse. His Yellows-supporting is more casual these days, but he remains one of Europe’s great Terracemen.

After further socialising with the finest gentlemen South Devon has to offer – including but not limited to Paul Bastard, my old man and uncle – we joined the back of a queue to get into Park View Road. The lot of them were, of course, only there for the Torquay, and were told as much.

I’ll leave the match analysis to the YouTubers, but I reckon we were quite unlucky to be on the end of a defeat. Despite being Quite Bad, we did also hit the woodwork twice and have a perfectly good goal disallowed. On another day it’s 2-0 and “title-winning teams play badly and win” and we all start tweeting pictures of boats.

You don’t need the details of the rest of my night out so I’ll just give you the headlines:

i. Hastily wished my former cafe-colleague Josh well on his Aussie Adventure; ii. The Doc and I gate crashed a double date at a cocktail festival involving GFB and his delightful better half; iii. Had an absolute hoot at the complementary bar skills class; iv. Little boogie; v. Chicken and chips and a kip on Ben’s sofa.

As is seemingly always the case, yesterday was an excellent day mired in part by a bad result at the football. Oh well. Onto the FA Cup. I’m away to eat the piece of fruit that my body is craving.