TT BLOG

Matty Hayward – @MattyHayward96

WHAM! BAM! THANK YOU, SAM

Another week, another departure. Five days after Plainmoor bid farewell to spirited wideman Dylan Morgan, another mainstay of the last couple of seasons said his goodbyes. Sam Dreyer has joined Harrogate Town “for an undisclosed fee”, leaving behind great memories of near-successes, and an enormous hole in the Gulls’ back line.

Dreyer joined in the chaotic June of 2024, on the same day as Jadyn Crosbie. Like so many of the signings that summer, he was a punt. In footballing terms, he was a relative nobody: twenty years old, sixteen appearances for Hampton & Richmond after failing to break through at Stevenage or Peterborough, zero credit in the bank beyond an ex-Gull dad. There was no reason to believe he’d be a good signing, beyond trusting the scouting nous of Paul Wotton. It’s safe to say that the former gaffer got this signing spot on.

In the intervening years, Dreyer went on to be a crucial figure at the heart of our defence, forming a dominant partnership with fellow classy centre-half Jordan Dyer. In his first season, he regularly took the captain’s armband in place of the oft-injured, oft-dropped Oscar Threlkeld. In his second, he took it after Matt Worthington was initially stripped of the honour. There’s an argument that, despite his youth, this season was the time to give him the gig full-time – at 22, he’s already a natural leader, and while not always the most verbally dominant, it’s clear he leads by example on the pitch.

After winning Young Player Of The Season in 2024/5, Dreyer signed a new contract, which looks like another shrewd bit of business. He’ll have felt hard-done-by to never win the main award in two attempts, too.

He leaves Torquay United with 98 appearances to his name, the only one off the bench being a desperately rushed return from injury in Jimmy Ball’s first game at Dagenham. He limped through that, typically selfless, and afterwards returned to form to take us so close to promotion for a second season in a row. He may always be one of Torquay’s nearly-men.

He was never a massive threat in the opposition box, nor was goalscoring particularly in his remit, but he notched three times for the Yellows, perhaps most memorably a header at the Beveree to put us ahead against his former side.

In terms of legacy, the level at which he’s played for us limits his claims to make it into the great pantheon of modern TUFC centre backs. The fairest parallels to draw are to Kyle Cameron, another young defender who had fallen out of the academy system and needed a springboard back to the Football League. The two of them would make a formidable pairing at most levels of the professional game now, and while Dreyer – perhaps disappointingly – isn’t going directly to League Two, one would expect him to have a similar, if not better, career trajectory to the much-maligned Magpie. Perhaps Sam was swayed by Harrogate’s, to be fair absolutely excellent, Wetherspoons. I doubt it was the tea rooms or the home attendances. It might just have been the dough.

For Torquay, this sale is frustrating, not least because of when it has happened. Of course, we’re a club in the National League South, and we’re trying to run a football club sustainably (even if that means ‘making a sustainable loss’). With that, comes a food chain. And with that comes the inevitability of your best players moving up the pyramid. Let’s not forget that three years ago we almost got relegated and we would’ve had to beg teams to take those players off our hands. We gave Ross ‘Millstone’ Marshall a two-year deal! Now, we’re in a position where clubs above us in leagues above us are interested in our players, and that’s objectively a good sign. Losing them while they were under contract, for money, is far better than having our players picked off for free like we’ve seen so often, or throwing them on the Ladysmead scrapheap.

Hopefully, this not only puts useful funds back into the coffers for incoming players, but also to take a dent out of the annual loss figure. It is a function of a club who tries to sign good footballers, that sometimes we have to sell them because they become too good for us to hold onto. The last time this happened, before this week, was Joe Lewis to Stockport four years ago, a player who will draw natural comparisons to the outgoing Dreyer. We’ve since let many Football League quality players slip through our net. Furthermore, these sales should mean that we’re a more attractive proposition for prospective signings who have Football League aspirations and want to kickstart their careers like those Morgan and Dreyer have at Plainmoor.

In the immediate future, though, the squad looks in a precarious position. We started the season with surely three of the best centre backs in the league. Now, we’ve got one, and the Farnham Fiasco is evidence enough that our bit-part central defenders aren’t going to cut the mustard. Jimmy Ball insists that they’re working hard behind the scenes to bring someone in, and frankly they’ll need to hit the ground running.

As for Dreyer, we should wish him all the best. This is not just because of his valiant contributions in TUFC Yellow, but because if he performs in Harrogate Yellow it sounds like we’ll be entitled to a healthy chunk of any future fee. That said, I assume Exeter City will also claim 5% because Sam once had a Jager Bomb in TimePiece.

All the best, Sammy. Thanks for the good times. We were so close.