TT BLOG

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive blogs about the world of Torquay United

· NEIL UNCUT

· YELLOWS PAST- BIG NEV

· YELLOWS PRESENT- EBBSFLEET BLOG

· YELLOWS FUTURE- BISHOPS LYDEARD (H)

· ONE FOR THE LADIES- SALISBURY (H)

It’s been an interesting week.

On Thursday, a few of us sat at Neil Warnock’s feet as he let his hair down after his Plainmoor press conference.

I am far too well-mannered to describe the weekend as a “shit sandwich”, but it did have that feel. A rather depressing trek to Ebbsfleet on Saturday was bookended by an enjoyable evening listening to Neville Southall on Friday night and an uplifting Sunday afternoon watching the Women by the banks of the Lemon.

On Tuesday I was in the posh seats as United got a very welcome three points against Salisbury.

Thursday- A chat with the interim manager

After the camera was switched off, Neil Warnock held court with us. It was great to hear a few more of his memories from decades in the game. Dave Thomas chipped in with tales of NUJ picket lines, when it was not unknown for Torquay manager Mike Green to turn up with a bottle of whisky to help the strikers keep warm. Obviously the confidences have to be respected, but it probably won’t come as a shock to know that Warnock feels many referees don’t always do themselves justice, that VAR isn’t going well and that a certain goal by Chelsea at Cardiff a few years ago was miles offside. He may or may not have shown us the picture on his phone that proves it!

Friday- Big Nev

I went to the Cove hoping for some after dinner anecdotes from our old friend. Neville Southall had plenty of great football tales, but he also spoke engagingly and with some passion about his varied life since he hung up the goalkeeping gloves. Nev has worked with troubled youngsters and adults, normally in education settings. During his time at a Pupil Referral Unit in Kent, he would often be responsible for keeping 16 youngsters out of trouble single-handed. He would get them in a minibus and take them off for an afternoon’s activities. It didn’t always go to plan, and he recalled being thrown out of a bowling alley, an ice rink and even Dover Castle!

He said that the best part of his work is trying to get kids work experience. He is currently working with a travellers’ site. He thinks the education and care systems are broken, but he loves his job because he knows he can make a difference. He recently worked with a young traveller. Aged 14, the lad couldn’t read or write, but by the time Nev had finished with him he had sent his first text message to his mum. It was a huge step forward, and this is how Nev summed it up:

“My job now is as good as anything I’ve ever done in football.”

But of course it’s football for which he is rightly famous. He played nearly 600 games in an Everton team which gave the all-conquering Liverpool a run for their money in the 80’s, as well as representing Wales 92 times.

He was in the Everton teams which won the Football League in 1984/5 and 1986/7, as well as winning the FA Cup in 1984 and the Cup Winners Cup the following year.

Not bad for a lad from Llandudno.

Well after that peak, he arrived at Plainmoor, following frustrating times at Stoke and Doncaster. You don’t have to spend long in Nev’s company to realise that if he doesn’t want to do something he will give it a wide berth, but somehow his old mate from Everton Dave Watson persuaded him to head to Devon, where Dave’s brother Alex was plying his trade as a centre back.

The rest, as they say, is Torquay United history. He saved a penalty in his first game against Hull, and over the next couple of seasons he was a massive presence (physically and metaphorically) behind a team that mainly struggled.

He features in many fans’ all time eleven despite only playing 53 games for us, most of them after his 40th birthday.

It wasn’t all sunshine & rainbows at Plainmoor- to coin a phrase!

He slayed a couple of sacred cows. It was obvious he didn’t rate Wes Saunders’ managerial skills, or his training methods:

“I’m sure Wes must have given a team talk but if he did I’ve no idea what it was. I tried not to listen. I never listened to a manager. My job never changed- keep the ball out of the net. Shut up & let me get on with it!”

Former England physio Norman Medhurst came in for a bit of criticism too. It seems Norm was a bit of a one trick pony when it came to treating the regular hamstring injuries Wes’ squad sustained:

“When you went into the treatment room there was more ice than on the Polar Express!”

Playing behind Jimmy Aggrey needed all his people skills. It seems Jimmy was a confidence player: if he did something good early on, he would tend to have a good game, but he could let his head drop otherwise. Concentration doesn’t seem to have been a strong point:

“As a goalkeeper, you’ve got to be a psychologist. You are the organiser. You’ve got to get to know the 4 “nuggets” in front of you and find out what they need. If the ball went up the other end Jimmy would start looking at planes!”

Reading this, you might get the impression that Nev is a miserable character. Anything but. He is a very normal bloke with a great sense of humour who has strong opinions rooted in experience and a good appreciation of what makes people tick. He is one of the best keepers ever to play the game, but clearly much, much more than that too.

His closing remarks summed up a player with a keen appreciation of what football can do for communities like Torquay. He said we will need patience as we try to build our club again and he wished us luck for our trip to Ebbsfleet the following morning, his parting thought being that: “it’s a shit hole.”

Saturday- A Painful Return to Kent

Travelling the UK you see some lovely parts of the country. The trip up through the fells to Carlisle is a favourite of mine, and this month we have had some fun in the pretty towns of the Sussex coast. But for every beauty spot there is an eyesore, and as we limped into Northfleet on Saturday it was clear that we would be spending our afternoon in the latter. Nev was spot on!

It was a day that was painful in almost every way. A lame 3-0 defeat against a team that puts the bang into average. A red card for Matt Worthington at a time when the squad needed a captain but has lost another player. The company was good, as normal, but the route planning left a bit to be desired. Most of the London Underground was having a day off, and what ought to have been a simple trip from Paddington to St Pancras became an odyssey through Farringdon and Warren Street, with my hip and knee complaining with every extra step.

We probably picked the wrong station too, going to Ebbsfleet International rather than Northfleet, although that did allow us to sample the delights of Car Park C- made famous a couple of years ago by Charlie Baker & John Cadigan. There are several American states with a smaller surface area than that car park. I’ve been told you can fit Rhode Island into its bottom left-hand corner.

Once Ebbsfleet had found the bottom left-hand corner of James Hamon’s net after half an hour there was only one winner. We enjoyed a couple of pints in the ground before the game with some of the 250 heroes who made the trip, and Chris Wade- a connoisseur of these things- was impressed with the programme cover. That is probably all there is to say about a day when we extended our winless run to seven games.

Sunday- Goals, Girls and Gulls Eye View

Newton Abbot Rec was sopping wet on a misty afternoon when you could see the length of the pitch but not much more than that. Our table topping Women’s team faced Bishops Lydeard for the second time in quick succession. It was an eight-nil win in Somerset seven days, but Chloe Pengelly’s goal appetite seems insatiable, and she made it another afternoon to forget for the visitors.

Pengelly’s 15-minute hat trick set up a 7 goal first half, and easing down slightly- despite perhaps the best 90 minutes I have ever seen from a Torquay winger in Beth Everson’s performance- the final score was 9 (nine) nil.

On a day- post Ebbsfleet and still aching- when I might have been feeling sorry for myself, it was great to see our women playing the game for the love of it. Silverware may well await Ryan Perks’ charges this year, but his talented squad play a hard but fair brand of football which seldom fails to entertain.

As I nursed a cup of tea in the second half, my Supporters Trust colleague Michel Thomas struck up a conversation with a Mum and two young girls- her daughter and the daughter’s friend. The girls were loving the afternoon. Sitting together, Torquay scarves around necks, they alternated between watching the match and sharing a video game. They play under 11’s football, and they have got the Torquay bug. One of them is a goalie- favourite player: James Hamon!- and they are looking forward to going to the Easter men’s game at Weston. They’re hoping it might be better than Bath at Christmas:

“We got cold, and nothing really happened.”

Welcome to away games, girls!

It was International Women’s Day, and in the evening we recorded a Gulls Eye View featuring 3 blokes and just the 1 woman, Rachel Malloch. Rach lost her Mum recently. It’s to Mum that she owes her love of the game, and she paid her a lovely tribute. That took some guts, and I thought it was brilliant. Because as Big Nev will tell you: when it comes down to it football is every bit as much about families and community as it is winning and losing.

Tuesday- Goosed!

My number had come up as “Director for the Day”, one of the perks from the Community Share Issue in 2024. It was a brilliant evening. I think it would have been fun anyway, but the lads were good enough score a couple of goals and a win against Salisbury may never have been celebrated as hard as it was on Tuesday night!

Celia and I had a chat with Simon Robinson- fresh off the M5- on the way in, and Michael and Sally Westcott were fantastic hosts. The food at the Cove was as good as I remember. We had a guest chef from the Mercure Hotel in Paignton, and on a rainy night the belly pork followed by poached pear & chocolate really hit the spot. Ian Brown did his bit on the mic, and it was a pleasure to meet Dylan Morgan’s grandparents! They are, rightly, immensely proud of their grandsons- Dylan’s brother is currently at Weymouth- and they get on the road to watch them every chance they get.

It was, of course, Dylan who brought the house down with his left foot screamer just after half time. Although the Family Stand view doesn’t suit everyone, it was fun to sit in the padded seats- with blankets available for anyone who wanted one! Michael kicked every ball, and I’m not ashamed to say I gave him a hug when Matt Jay made the game safe (Safeish. We didn’t worry when Salisbury got one back. No Sir, Not us. Not one bit).

Post match, the young winger was dragged in for his player of the match presentation. He admitted that it had been a tough night. Salisbury had seen plenty of the ball and both he & Jordan Young had had to do quite a bit of defending from the front. With subs rarer than hens’ teeth, they had had to play the full 93 minutes, and he said what we all thought: they were absolutely “goosed” by the final whistle!

I abused the unusually close access to the players by quizzing Jordan Dyer and Cody Cooke about their injuries. They were good enough to answer the questions and Cody even posed for a photo with my Missus.

Michael was tight lipped about the managerial situation (although he told me as much as he could)….and now we wait.