TT GROUNDHOPPING

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive looks back at his 24/25 away trips

2024/25 GROUNDHOPPING

AUGUST

In football, August is always the month where everything seems possible- but nothing really matters. You don’t win anything, and a slow start is just that. The three league games brought two wins and a loss.

Sat 17 Aug Farnborough L 0–1, Tue 20 Aug Bath City W 2–1, Mon 26 Aug Chesham United W 3–2

Farnborough: It had been at Cherrywood Road in February when some of us had protested against the continued failures on and off the field under the old regime. Tom Kelly and I had handed out some TUST-funded flyers (one of them entitled “We want our club back”) and Simon Bittlestone unfurled the iconic “This Club is Ours” banner. Not everyone agreed with us on the night, but subsequent events changed minds.

Seven months later, and we had an easy train ride up to Hampshire. The Travel Club were Bryn-Bacon-Butty fuelled and, joined by many others, the Yellow Army was out in force. Neil Warnock glad-handed his way around the ground pre-match. He paused for a picture with Matty & me, and the smiles on faces spoke volumes.

Believe it or not, Farnborough were fancied by some to challenge for the title, and they were the better side in the first half. Young Finn Tonks gave away a penalty and that proved to be decisive as we went down to a disappointing defeat. We huffed and puffed in the second half, but didn’t carry too much of a threat. It was a story which would never entirely go away all season.

Although we haven’t seen wholesale squad changes since then, it’s interesting to look back at the line-up that day, which was: Hamon; Dyer (Palmer 90+3), Dreyer, Foulston; Tonks, Threlkeld (Collins 46), Mussa (Hasani 46), Hayfield, Carson (Seymour 58); Cooke, Ash (Crosbie 77).

We would persist with the 3-5-2 formation for some time. Finn Tonks returned to Bournemouth after his loan, Roddy Collins left us after only a few games, whilst the striking trio of Seymour, Ash and Crosbie would all spend the majority of the season on loan at AFC Totton, Bath and Gloucester respectively.

Bath: Bath is a beautiful city. It attracts many thousands of tourists every year. Jane Austen made her home there and the Abbey, Royal Crescent and Roman Baths are perennial attractions. It’s also a bit of a bugger to get to! It was a drive after work for me, and I soon tired of the picturesque Somerset villages which litter the way on the cross-country route from the M5. But spirits were high in the beer garden of the Old Crown Inn. Having gone down to a morale-sapping defeat in Spring, late Summer was more productive. There were nearly 700 of us at Twerton Park that night, and the lads put in a great display. Cody Cooke made no mistake from close range early on, and Eddie Palmer’s massive forehead put us two up. We held on fairly comfortably for the 2-1 win. Other memories of the night include an absolutely banging cheeseburger and a super moon rising over the home end.

Chesham: I had a vague memory that Charlie Baker might have played in a charity match at Chesham, but other than “near London” I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where it was before they made their debut on our fixture list. Actually, it’s not that close to London. It’s in the Chilterns, situated distantly down a branch of the Metropolitan line. It was a beautiful Bank Holiday Monday, and as soon as I stepped off the tube I warmed to the place. It’s got more hanging baskets than Trago and is altogether a nicer way to spend a couple of hours. I met up with Alan Wills and his three musketeers, along with Cav and several of his mates (who have clocked up more miles following Torquay and England than they care to remember). It was a chilled lunchtime, in anticipation of what would surely be a routine three points.

What followed was 90 minutes of mayhem. Some dozy defending and goalkeeping kept the home side in the game, even though their right-back pulled off the best save I saw all year just before half time to tip a goal-bound Tonks shot over the bar. We converted the penalty but laboured against 10 men, and we were into injury time before we were able to make it count. It was 2 players who would have very limited roles this season who brought the magic. Dean Moxey produced a quality cross and Brad Ash converted at the near post in front of us, to spark what I can only describe as “scenes”.

Chesham would of course get their own back at Plainmoor with a cynical performance that sees them transformed from “nice little club” to “we need to shove it right up them next year” for most Torquay fans.

SEPTEMBER

Earth Wind and Fire’s disco hit has of course become one of the great Torquay songs, as we celebrate the dance floor successes of our best striker of recent times, Jamie Reid. It wasn’t a vintage month for travelling Torquay fans though.

Sat 7 Sep Welling United L 0–2, Sat 14 Sep Bishops Cleeve (FA Cup) L 0–3

Welling: We had lots to drink up and down the infamous main drag. Presumably the referee was also inebriated, because that’s one of the only reasons I can think of for his scandalous decision to disallow a perfectly good Cody Cooke goal in the first half. But this was another afternoon when we weren’t great in front of goal, and we also ran into our old back-up keeper Rhys Lovett, who was in inspired form. He had plenty of practice, as Welling went on to be relegated with something to spare. But they caught us with a late sucker-punch and it was a pretty disappointing afternoon.

Bishops Cleeve: “Disappointing” doesn’t really touch the sides when we try to describe this abysmal day in Gloucestershire. It seemed like such a nice tie to start our FA Cup campaign, which nowadays begins before the clocks go back and in fact well before the end of the cricket season! As you might expect from a village not all that close to Cheltenham, the journey was a bit of a faff. It was simple enough to reach the spa town by train, but there was then a bus trip on a rickety single decker through the town, out the other side and past the racecourse at a top speed of approximately 17 mph. I then missed my stop, so had to walk back about a mile to the ground.

I can’t remember a shot on goal. It was probably the day that Ash and Seymour were consigned to Paul Wotton’s discard pile. If we were dreadful in attack, we were much worse in defence. We were lucky only to concede three against a team that would go on to contest end of season playoffs (in Exmouth’s league) with about as much success as we did. The milk of human kindness was in short supply as we waited for the bus afterwards. Those heading back to Reading and London would go on to experience “rail chaos.” I expect we’ll all have a good laugh about it one day. Probably not for a couple of decades though!

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OCTOBER

Going into Autumn we needed a bit of a lift. St Albans had escaped from Plainmoor with a point which annoyed us and ultimately did them no good whatsoever.

Sat 5 Oct Hampton & Richmond Borough W 1–0, Mon 14 Oct Wimborne (FA Youth Cup) W 4-2, Sat 19 Oct Eastbourne Borough D 1 – 1, Sat 26 Oct Hornchurch L 1-2

Hampton: This was exactly what we all needed. An all-timer of a trip based around a Dan Hayfield Appreciation Society day out, which several of us enhanced with a lovely post-match meal and an overnight stay. But it was the pre-match nosh which will live in infamy. You’ll have heard this story before, but I think it bears another telling.

We congregated at The World’s End pub. The beer garden was great and the beer was -for South West London- reasonably priced. The kitchen struggled to deal with the Torquay influx but, as if by magic, after about an hour there was a large and unexpected delivery of pizza. After some initial puzzlement about who might have ordered the 10 boxes, a consensus grew. There was nobody else in the garden, and nobody had come to claim them. The answer seemed simple. Those lovely Bryn fellas must have done it again. This was clearly the Farnborough Bacon Buttie Sequel.

Torquay tucked in, until there was only a quarter of an olive, spinach and fried egg pizza remaining. It had my name on it, so as people started drifting away to the ground, I picked up the fateful cardboard.

“Hey mate did you pay for those Pizzas?” asked a new arrival, smartly clad in a green OJFC hoodie. “No of course you didn’t.” he went on, “Because those pizzas are ours.”

Whoops. My flustered apology was waved away and I decided to make myself scarce. I’m sorry to say (I’m not remotely sorry) that the Yellow Army had snaffled the post-match meal of Old Johnians FC! They were ex public schoolboys fresh from a 9-man defeat against the Old Reptonians. There were genuine attempts to make amends in the next few days, almost culminating with a Talk Sport exclusive.

The football was fun too. Memories of last season’s humbling were put to bed as a Cody Cooke header set up a comfortable win, whilst we basked in the sun and stayed as close to the pop-up bar as possible. Michael Westcott and Paul Wotton wandered over for chats after the final whistle, and the sense of togetherness and well-being was so palpable you could have sliced it with a pizza cutter.

Wimborne (a), FA Youth Cup: OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve got it pretty bad again. Yellows Fever is a recurring illness and, in my delirium, I decided to drive to Dorset to cheer on the youngsters at a ground where the first team had also tasted cup success in 2023. Amazingly I wasn’t the only Torquay fan there. As well as parents & family, Nigel Tabb and his normal crew had had the same idea as me. Bizarrely, I found myself in the row behind Harry Redknapp as an exciting game kicked off (his grandson had the misfortune to be playing right back against Jacob Wellington).

Torquay were worth their win, but it wasn’t settled until the last few minutes. The road closures coming back from away games this season tend to merge into one, but I think this was the night they closed the A35 at Axminster and I had to drive through the fog across the Seaton Tramway and home in the early hours. But you won’t hear me moaning about it. Hardly at all.

Eastbourne: This was enjoyable. The least said about the seafront hotel the better, but everything else was great fun. I did a bit of sightseeing on the way, enjoying an hour in Battle, the town built at the top of the hill where a professional army had been slaughtered in the Non-League Norman Conquest 958 years earlier.

Matty had made his fortnightly commute from Cheshire to the South East. We rendezvoused in Eastbourne town centre at lunchtime, also meeting Mark Hirst, who disappeared on a yomp along the beach to the ground: a feat we had no interest in. We taxied the 3 miles or so out to Priory Lane. We had been told that Eastbourne had spent a few quid in the summer and were really going for it this year. They scored first, but we were on level terms before half time: I saw Finn Craske’s equaliser from the beer queue and may have annoyed the locals with my celebration. A solid point earned.

There was a thunderstorm on Sunday morning. Although I managed to steer the car the dry side of Beachy Head I somehow ended up very lost in what I now know from Michael Portillo’s ramblings to be The Weald. I was very pleased finally to locate the M27 and to get home from there.

Hornchurch: Bleddy Hell! Just when you thought it was safe to start singing about promotion after a hard-fought midweek win at home to Worthing, we chucked in a really bland performance in deepest Essex. Or East London. Or Upminster. It’s one of those. I don’t care which. The Urchins deserved their win at a soggy athletics stadium and it was a long, long way back to Paddington. Even the spectacular delights of Whitechapel street market and the weirdness of the Blind Beggar pub couldn’t lift our spirits that night. A bad day at the office. Very much the sort of day when your computer won’t start, you forget your password, break the photocopier and somebody nicks your sandwiches out of the fridge.