An 'Undred Pands

I love going to Torquay on the train.  The last half hour on the Dawlish coast is special going right by the sea-front and through the tunnels.  One time, the train from Guildford to Reading was ten minutes late, leaving me one minute to make the connecting train to Newton Abbot.  I ran to platform four, jumped on the train, and wandered up and down looking for fellow United fans.   I didn't find any, and soon found out I was on the direct train to Bristol.  I hopped off at Bristol, before getting a train back to Swindon, and finally off to Torquay.  More about the return journey later

This time New Year engineering works at Reading persuaded me it was better to drive down, as bus transfers meant I wouldn't get home until after 11pm.  As it was a bank holiday Monday, I set off at 10am for the 170 mile trip.  The journey has a lot of single carriageway roads, and took me past Stonehenge with families doing their bank holiday trek around the exclusion zone around the stones.

I arrived at Plainmoor at around 1pm, drove around the narrow roads looking for fifteen minutes for a space to park, and finally got a space just 100 yards walk from the training ground.  As per usual, I went into Boots and Laces, the club bar.  This time, they have introduced a Members' Scheme, so the home fans pay under £2 per pint, but the away fans are at full whack £2.80.  Still, they had a barrel of local real ale.  

We checked out the team line up, and bizarrely it almost exactly matched my suggestions on the forum the day before.  We had just succumbed 2-0 to Southend, and my post was "Seems like potter is undroppable. Still think he is best coming on late. Replace purkiss with batt and you don't need potter either. Perhaps we should mix things up a bit with craddock up front midson and green supporting him."  Wilder did exactly that, and the game was set up for a right rollercoaster.

United went ahead 1-0, then 2-0, before within seconds Torquay brought it back to 2-1 before half time.

In the second half interval, we had the joy of a half time 50-50 draw, with one of the prizes being a chance for a cross bar challenge for "an 'undred pands".  No-one won.  

Second half, United went 3-1 up, which set me up to tell Carl that we had been three up before at the Kasstad only to draw 3-3.   "Don't effing say that" was all that it took to prompt Torquay to get two goals back.  In the dying death we got the fourth to claim all three points, and I faced the drive back, with snow flurries and trails of red lights for a good hour or two.