03/09/60 & 16/03/68: Bury (H)

Ties up with this about the new lights:

torquayfansforum.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=tufchistory&thread=2515&page=1#27170

Well, there's Twitchin and Sandercock tucked away in that list of reserve players as well as - of course - Fred Binney who later scored loads for Exeter, Brighton and Plymouth.

I suspect Jon Hearne is the answer to Merse's question and I guess that must be John Wingate from Budleigh Salterton who never played for our first team but appeared over two hundred times for Exeter City.

And is that Russell Petersen who was around the Western League for donkeys years playing for all sorts of clubs?

As Merse hints, Trevor Shepherd was an unknown loan signing who made an enormous impact during his two or three months at Plainmoor. He ended up at Argyle where, if I remember correctly, his career was curtailed by injury.

And, back to the match against Bury, the name which stands out is Bobby Collins, ex-Celtic, Everton, Leeds and Scotland. A hard man who was well-suited to the way Don Revie set about his task at Elland Road.

Hardly prolonged merse, but I will admit I have been saying the same thing for a while you have to ask if his time here will have the desired result for Posh, they asked us to take him so he could get first team football and not just reserve football.

It looks unlikely he is going to get much first team football at this time, so that is why in my view it would be best for him to return to Posh.

It should not be forgotten just what our league position is and any players who do come in, must be able and ready to do a job for us, as we fight to get back up the table.

Russell Petersen’s name is so familiar from so many Sunday Independent match reports that he must have gone on playing until well into his forties.

All-in-all, Merse’s postings about those United reserve sides of forty years ago remind us of another age when the second teams – and, indeed, third teams – of professional clubs had an importance all of their own. Look back to the league constitutions of those days and it’s hardly surprising. In Devon, for example, during that 1967/68 season only Barnstaple, Bideford and St Luke’s College (Western League) and Newton Abbot Spurs (SW League) played above district football. That would have given Torquay United Reserves something of a status which is now but a distant memory, something I offer as historical fact rather than a nostalgic plea for those days to return.

To the matter in hand and isn’t it strange that, in light of plenty of forgettable and routine matches against Bury, how that March 1968 fixture has such a special place in Plainmoor folklore?

There’s two reasons for that. Firstly, the game itself. Study the league table in Timbo’s programme carefully: that was a genuine top-of-the-table clash and we hammered them. Bury, unfortunately, had the last laugh by finishing second and getting promoted (with us in 4th place) but here’s how the next week’s Soccer Star recorded that wonderful day:



Soccer Star also carried a piece by Maurice Golesworthy, its South West correspondent. Maurice was from Exeter and was well-known for his football encyclopaedias and “who’s who” publications. These particular notes are interesting because – should you read between the lines – you see the possibility of Torquay and Argyle swapping places that year. Sadly that didn’t happen even though Argyle sportingly kept their side of the bargain:



The second reason the Bury game is so fondly remembered is because, as Timbo reminds us, it was on television as that week’s Match of the Day. That, in its own way, was simply astonishing because it was still the time (just) when the BBC only showed one game on a Saturday night. Naturally enough the chosen game was nearly always from the First Division with a handful of Second Division games thrown into the mix. To televise our game must have been quite a surprise - and coup for us - and I’d love to know how it came about. Was it clever work on Tony Boyce’s behalf or an imaginative move by a BBC staffer?

Either way, rumours that the BBC was coming to Plainmoor gathered momentum in the days leading up to the game and became the main talking point amongst us first years at secondary school. First, somebody heard a special broadcasting tower had suddenly appeared on Great Hill. Then, on the Thursday or Friday, the news spread that “the vans” were parked in Marnham Road.

Such was the technological allure and glamour of television back then that I knew kids who went to the match simply because it was on TV and, indeed, some of them were unable to take their eyes off the cameras all afternoon. As for the general viewing public, I imagine a fair number switched off in disgust at the thought of a mere Third Division game whilst we, naturally, were thrilled that our boys had put on such a show. How could we then have imagined how years later Setanta would show our comparatively mundane Conference games which – for those in the know – could be watched in various corners of the world?

Anyway, away from South Devon that Saturday evening, there seems to have been at least one satisfied viewer in Gordon Jeffery of Soccer Star:







And which First Division matches did the BBC overlook to televise Torquay United v Bury? Here are the results from that Saturday (and see if you can spot the players with Torquay United connections as well as the Devonian goalscorer):




Oh, and whilst I have those copies of Soccer Star in front of me, how about this?



Lastly, back to that earlier Bury game of 1960. At centre-half for Bury was John McGrath, a proper hard man, who I later saw playing for Southampton in the very first match I watched in that city. I’d be mightily impressed if Timbo can show us any programmes from our 1950s encounters with the Saints so - in the meantime - the best I can offer is this one from the era of Bates, Paine, Channon and a Newcastle United team which actually won something:

If I was relying on memory I'd say coverage of games outside the top two divisions was extremely rare before 1970, after which there was more evidence of a quota system operating. I'd also date this as around the time the programme started to show more than one game.

But, inevitably, there's a Match of the Day Wiki page which suggests there was an agreement to show a certain number of Division Two games from the start of the programme in the mid 1960s. It also talks about Third Division coverage (without detail) and a Fourth Division game between Oxford and Tranmere shown during the programme's inaugural season (1964/65). Check the records and you'll see this game was played on the day of our FA Cup game against Spurs.

Wiki then claims there was no further Division Four coverage until 1978. My guess is that, if there was a lower division agreement in the late 1960s, it could only have been for one or two games a season. If this was the case, a top-of-the-table match in Division Three - in March - would have been a fairly logical choice.

The Wiki entry also mentions the agreement that the chosen game(s) wouldn't be revealed until after the final whistle. It doesn't say when this started but, apparently, the arrangement lasted until 1983. I'm assuming this rule applied in 1968 to such an extent the Herald Express couldn't report the planned coverage. If this is true, no wonder the grapevine was furtive that week.

Lastly, the myth. A web search finds this from an Otley RFC message board, written on a day when there must have been snow:

So in theory the only major game that might get played on Saturday is Penzance v Otley. So the TV cameras might be rushing down to show our brave lads to the nation. Its a long shot but in 1968 Match of the Day was Torquay United v Bury because it was the only soccer match played that day.

Standby to be impressed as I believe they will be put up sometime today