If QPR are going to tackle the Premiership without major additions then team spirit will be absolutely vital. In an effort to increase that Neil Warnock is taking his team to Cornwall this week to face an old foe in dire straits.
First Team Fixtures:
Monday July 18 – Tavistock A, 7pm
Wednesday July 20 – Plymouth A, 7.45pm
Friday July 22 – Bodmin Town A, 7.15pm
Reserve Fixtures:
Saturday July 23, Truro A, TBC
Monday July 25, Saltash A, TBC
Wednesday July 27, Buckland Athletic A, TBC
Youth Team Fixtures:
Sunday July 24, Liskeard Athletic A, 3pm
Tuesday July 26, St Austel A, 7pm
Thursday July 28, Elburton Villa A, 7pm
On the face of it, there is plenty to concern fans of QPR this summer. The signing of Jay Bothroyd last week raised spirits, but they were quickly dashed again when the DJ Campbell deal (a snip at £1.25m) stalled on an argument over fees and he could now be set for West Ham. Neil Warnock has admitted that apart from the money for Campbell he doesn’t expect to see any further cash from the board this summer, even if Adel Taarabt is sold to PSG for stupid amounts of cash.
Some fans have responded to this by clinging to past examples of clubs that went into the Premiership and made a fist of things despite adding sparingly to their squad – Reading finished in the top half, Blackpool took it down to the final day before being relegated – but at the moment it seems as if we are lambs to the slaughter. We’re being sent in to fight lions armed only with tooth picks. And would you be surprised if Warnock was dispensed of by our board once the lions have taken their first few chunks? No, me neither.
Bernie Ecclestone said last week that having achieved their aim of Premiership football within four years, admittedly only once Briatore had taken his hands off the tiller after two and a half years of absolute farce, they would not be doing “anything stupid” this summer. And personally I think he’s absolutely right. I would not want to see QPR lashing out money left right and centre this summer, packing our squad with the Carlton Coles of this world on massive wages and for huge transfer fees. QPR as a club cannot sustain it, and it’s no guarantee of survival anyway. I think we’re almost certain to be relegated as it stands, but we could still be relegated with a whole load of Cole type players on board as well only then we’d have a stupid wage bill to support and we’d be back on the slope to League One and maybe beyond. I’d like to see us make a little bit of a fist of it, but considering Norwich have spent £8m and all they have to show for it is Steve Morrison, Elliott Bennett, Bradley Johnson, James Vaughan and George Pilkington perhaps we’re right to be keeping the cheque book closed.
However, Ecclestone and the board appear to want to have their cake and eat it. We’re going to see the walk-up ticket fees announced this week and while simple arithmetic while armed with the season ticket application pack means we already know what they’re going to be I expect another wave of negative publicity over that. Ecclestone says the prices are in line with other clubs around us – by which he seems to mean London Premiership clubs – but charging prices in line with the likes of Spurs and Arsenal while fielding a team vastly inferior to them and just about everybody else in the top flight is taking the piss.
As is the official website’s constant reference to our chance to see Wayne fucking Rooney at Loftus Road next season. Apart from possibly Dennis Bergkamp ten years ago I’ve never enjoyed watching an opponent at Loftus Road, and I’ve certainly never gone there to see the opposition. This strand of our marketing this summer shows yet another chronic lack of understanding of QPR from the people charged with promoting the club. It’s an embarrassment to QPR and insulting to the intelligence of our supporters.
As was our players taking to the field on Friday night at Harrow in last season’s third strip with the Gulf Air sponsorship masked with gaffer tape. I mean for God’s sake have you ever seen anything so pathetic in all your life? Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, with all their connections in sport and business, currently have a company called Octagon touting the sponsorship of our shirts around with, as yet, no success whatsoever. In the meantime we have no kit. This is utterly shambolic. When you cannot even find a sponsor for a club in the Premiership, with all its global coverage, you deserve to be an absolute laughing stock. Ecclestone and Briatore should be ashamed of that as much as anything else.
I posted on our message board a little while ago that if Ecclestone and Briatore were to come out and simply say that with a ground that only holds 18,000 QPR can never hope to organically sustain Premiership football and they are not willing to subsidise it as Al Fayed has done at Fulham I would respect that and agree with them. Had they kept the ticket prices the same or raised them a reasonable amount, because their extortionate rises will only bring in an extra £2m which is relative peanuts to a Premiership side, and run the club professionally in the meantime I’d be right behind them. I don’t want to see QPR spending £60m it hasn’t got on players who don’t really want to be here, selling the future of our club down the river. But where is all this television money going to go if it’s not on expensive new players? How much of it will QPR actually see and get to keep? If it’s paying our debts and securing our future then fair enough, but if it’s going straight to the board members and QPR are going to be relegated in ten months time with a Premiership wage bill and none of the riches that come with it then our club could be on it knees for years.
And to not even have a kit? To be playing with gaffer tape over an old sponsor? It’s the least of our problems but it’s a clear visual sign of a club being run appallingly by people who couldn’t care less about it. Let’s be quite honest here, if Norwich were playing with gaffer taped shirts and signing Kieron Dyer on a free we’d all be pointing, laughing and saying they’d be lucky to get past Derby’s points record.
The one thing we have going for us is Neil Warnock, although whether he will remain in this shambles remains to be seen. If he keeps QPR up this season it will be a miracle, and it will be largely based on team spirit and hard work. That makes this week’s trip to the south west absolutely crucial. While we’re there, we meet a side once promoted alongside us but now three divisions lower. There’s always somebody worse off than yourself.
Recent History: Unless you’re a Korean tourist sold an expensive ticket to our first game with Bolton as part of a package tour then you won’t need reminding that when Ian Holloway dragged us out of the third tier kicking and screaming in 2004 we did it in second place behind Plymouth Argyle. Holloway would go on to manage Plymouth, and build a side with the likes of Sylvain Ebanks-Blake, Peter Halmosi and our own Akos Buzsaky at its heart that briefly threatened the Championship play off places.
The problem at Plymouth then was the lack of support from the public. Considering the population of Plymouth and the surrounding area, and lack of league football clubs in the vicinity, the attendances at Home Park were a constant source of disappointment and frustration to Holloway and the Argyle board who had built such an attractive and competitive side at the upper end of the English game. Holloway left for Leicester, after initially saying he would do no such thing, and it has been downhill ever since.
That team broke up spectacularly. Blake went to Wolves, Buzsaky to Loftus Road, Halmosi to Hull, David Norris to Ipswich, Dan Gosling to Everton and so on. Contract situations meant Plymouth didn’t really get in a great deal of money for any of them, but had to spend on wages and transfer fees to try and replace them. A lethal combination, and one that saw them relegated from the Championship in 2010 despite the return of Paul Sturrock as manager. Sturrock was the man who initially masterminded the Argyle revival that saw them rise from the Third Division, where they were persistently battling relegation from the league altogether in a ramshackle ground, into the First in a refurbished stadium with a competitive team. He’s now at Southend, and to be honest I’m stunned by that because towards the end of his second spell at Home Park, following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, he cut a forlorn figure who would slur his words through interviews and offered no answers to their terminal decline.
On our last visit to Home Park, in August 2010, the programme and pre-match build up was dominated by the takeover of the club by Japanese businessman Yasuaki Kagami who bought out former majority shareholder Paul Stappleton. Kagami wasn’t at Home Park that day, and has in fact never visited the club during his tenure. More pressingly he has repeatedly promised and failed to deliver the necessary cash injections Plymouth required for such things as tax bills. HM Revenue and Customs gave the club every chance, but were let down once too often and forced administration on them last season. The club had already stopped paying its players by that point.
This match is a testimonial for long serving French goalkeeper Romain Larrieu who was between the sticks when Argyle pipped QPR to the Second Division title in 2004 and has seen plenty of comings and goings since then. Sadly he and his team mates will kick off this season, having not been paid several months worth of wages, in the bottom division. They were relegated in 2010 and crashed right through League One last season. I thought they might do that when they appointed Peter Reid as manager, a footballing dinosaur as I will elaborate on further shortly, but administration and a ten point deduction midway through the campaign made it a certainty.
Peter Reid, administration, two successive relegations, players not paid for months, stay-away Japanese owners – and we haven’t even got to the worst bit yet. Just when Argyle thought it couldn’t get any worse, when they thought they’d bottomed out, when the night seemed at its darkest, up stepped Peter Ridsdale. You’re circling the drain when that guy gets involved, and their current plan to exit administration has to be seen to be believed.
As well as his current attempts to “save” Plymouth, and his well documented catastrophically bad management from which Leeds United are never likely to full recover, Ridsdale also has another matter to add to his growing CV of doom. As well as Plymouth he is currently focussed on defending three charges of criminal trading and fraud over his ownership of Cardiff. The city council’s trading standards department took action over Ridsdale’s incredible ticket sale scheme devised and implemented in December 2009. Ridsdale told Cardiff fans that if they bought their season tickets for 2010/11 early they would be entitled to a full refund upon promotion to the Premiership and the money raised would be spent on players to get them there. However the money was actually spent on servicing Cardiff’s spiralling debt, and no new players were signed at all.
Ridsdale is currently seeking approval from the league for his latest scheme, and should he receive it then it’s surely the final death knell for any suggestion that the Football League operates any kind of ‘fit and proper’ person test for club ownership. The bid would see him become the owner of Plymouth Argyle for £1. The club would then be separated from the only asset it currently has going for it, Home Park, which will be sold, with the land around it, to a property developer. Shorn of its main asset the football club, still not playing its players, would be under the charge of Ridsdale. The horror, the unimaginable horror.
Frankly if this idea is approved, and Ridsdale deemed a fit and proper person to lead it, then the league has finally crossed into the realms of complete uselessness. Through our tussles over the last ten years QPR have built up a reasonable relationship with Plymouth and it’s a terrible shame to see them in this state. One can’t help but think that if this current Ridsdale plan is pushed through, the decline probably hasn’t finished yet.
Manager: It says something for how far Peter Reid’s stock fell after his departure from Sunderland that he has found himself overseeing the football side of the current Plymouth shambles. It says even more for Reid that he came into the Home Park hot seat from a spell with a Thai national side, which has become something of a graveyard for the worst managers Britain has to offer – Reid was succeeded by Bryan Robson.
Reid, who made 29 appearances for QPR as a player, started his managerial career at Man City where he secured two consecutive fifth place finishes in the top flight in the days before Arabian billionaires. In seven years at Sunderland he saved them from relegation to the Second Division, promoted them to the Premiership and guided them to seventh place with Kevin Phillips in flying form alongside Niall Quinn in attack. That was a superb Sunderland side, that regularly took the game to the leading lights of the top flight.
But at Sunderland, like at Man City, Reid eventually came under criticism for stagnating form and an old fashioned style of play. He would say, justifiably, that nobody at Man City or Sunderland gave much of a toss about how they were playing when they were winning but in truth his results in his latter months at Sunderland and wherever he has been since then have been abysmal. He oversaw the ultimate relegation of Leeds from the Premiership, so he should at least be familiar with the consequences of Peter Ridsdale’s club ownership. He then walked into Coventry City, where Eric Black had been doing a very decent job and was harshly sacked in favour of “a name”, and completely killed all their previous progress and again turned them into a poor, long ball side and got the sack after barely eight months in charge.
Then there was Thailand, where Sam Allardyce said “people like Peter Reid” should never be forced to go looking for a job. The inference clearly being that somebody with his experience should be entitled to a job in his own country. But for me football just seems to have moved on from Peter Reid. I found myself writing about Hampton and Richmond at the end of last week, talking about a new manager with concerns about their ball retention and style of play. The days of getting results by pumping the ball into the penalty area every time you get it are over, and footballers no longer respond to tea cups and swear words. Reid is a relic of a bygone era of football management, and he’s probably at one of the few clubs that would have him.
Players to Watch: Slim pickings for this section this week as Plymouth currently have 12 players listed on their official website for the new season and one them is “The Green Army” – their supporters. Among those names is that of Simon Walton who we know a bit about at Loftus Road.
Walton was signed by John Gregory in 2007. Rangers had performed a great escape the season before thanks largely to Gregory and the likes of Michael Mancienne, Danny Cullip, Adam Bolder and Lee Camp who he brought in. Walton was one of the new signings aimed at pushing Rangers on in Gregory’s first full season in charge, and given the manager’s previous craft in the transfer market hopes were high for him. Sadly he broke his leg in a pre-season friendly against Fulham. By the time he returned to action Luigi De Canio was in charge, Gregory fired after a disastrous start to the season and boardroom takeover.
Walton consequently never got a run in the QPR team and was eventually offloaded to Plymouth, strangely for more money (£600k) than we’d paid Charlton (£400k) for him which perhaps gives a clue as to how Plymouth ended up in their current sorry mess. He was signed as a central midfielder at QPR but played for Rangers, and eventually Plymouth, as a centre half. Paul Sturrock quickly fell out with him, after a stupid sending off at Barnsley, and he spent time out on loan at Crewe. He appeared to have been given a chance to resurrect his career his time last year when Kevin Blackwell took him to Sheffield United but for the second time in his career he found a move to a new club destroyed early on by a horrible injury in a pre-season game. Walton ruptured knee ligaments at Mansfield and never played competitively for Sheffield United. That injury and failed move to Bramall Lane means he’s now stuck on the sinking ship at Home Park, but he should be more than good enough in League Two.
As should Liam Dickinson who has signed on a free transfer this summer subject to the barmy takeover getting the go ahead. Dickinson earned a big money move to Derby County in 2008 after a 21 goal season for Stockport in this division. County were promoted that season and Dickinson was hot property, Derby eventually paid £750,000 for him. It didn’t work for him at Pride Park, where he was loaned out three times, or at Brighton who signed him in for £300,000 for three years and also loaned him out to Peterborough. Barnsley took him on last summer, but he spent all of last season out on loan and the decline back to League Two is also now complete. He looks a good signing for Plymouth to me though – a big athletic target man who has shown himself at this level before.
Carl Fletcher also remains, a player I’ve struggled to rate much during his career owing to his chronic lack of pace but somebody who has forged a very good, honest and steady career in the Football League. He started life with Sean O’Driscoll’s Bournemouth side that also included Wade Elliott and was a team I thoroughly enjoyed watching and admired a great deal. He went on to play for Palace and West Ham before joining Plymouth and has now dropped back through the leagues with them.
Links >>> Plymouth Official Website >>> Plymouth Message Board
Previous Meetings: The last time these sides met was at Loftus Road towards the end of the 2009/10 season. QPR were, by this point, under the charge of Neil Warnock who had already won his first match against promotion chasing West Brom at Loftus Road. He followed that up with an easy 2-0 win against the relegation haunted Pilgrims who struggled to cope with Adel Taarabt all evening. Taarabt won and scored a penalty before half time and then crossed for Damion Stewart to head home in the second period for a comfortable and fairly dull victory.
QPR: (4-4-1-1) Ikeme 7, Connolly 7, Hill 6, Stewart 8, Gorkss 7, Ephraim 7 (Cook 6), Faurlin 7, Leigertwood 8, Taarabt 9 (Buzsaky 6), Priskin 6, Simpson 7 (Vine 5)
Subs not used: Cerny, Ramage, Borrowdale, German
Goals: Taarabt 36 (penalty), Stewart 49 (assisted Taarabt)
Bookings: Hill (handball), Connolly (foul)
Plymouth: (4-5-1) Stockdale 5, Duguid 4, Fletcher 5, Johnson 6, Mackie 6, Arnason 4, Fallon 6 (Mason 6), Barker 5, Sawyer 6, Eckersley 5, Judge 6 (Bolasie 7)
Subs not used:Larrieu, McNamee, Summerfield, Wright-Phillips, Cooper
Bookings: Barker (dissent), Eckersley (foul), Duguid (foul)
The last time we were at Home Park was in August 2009 as part of a three match mini-tour of the south west that also included a 5-0 win at Exeter in the League Cup and a 1-0 defeat against Bristol City in the league. While grateful not to be sent to Plymouth on Boxing Day again the Rangers faithful were left disappointed by a lacklustre performance that still almost yielded a narrow win. Heidar Helguson converted Adel Taarabt's cross shot with his head in the first half but as Rangers performed their time honoured trick of dropping deeper and deeper the longer time went on a scramble in the goal mouth forced an injury time own goal equaliser out of Kaspars Gorkss. The fourth time in as many seasons Rangers have surrendered points to a late goal at Home Park, the third time in four years they had conceded in injury time.
Plymouth: Larrieu 8, McNamee 6, Seip 6, Timar 6, Sawyer 5, Fletcher 5, Paterson 7 (Duguid 86, -), Judge 7 (Noone 82, -), MacLean 5 (Sheridan 46, 7), Mackie 6, Fallon 7 Subs Not Used: Letheren, Arnason, Summerfield, Johnson Goals: Gorkss 90 og (assisted Fallon) QPR: Cerny 6, Ramage 6, Hall 7, Gorkss 6, Borrowdale 6, Routledge 7, Leigertwood 7, Mahon 5, Buzsaky 6 (Ephraim 72, 6), Taarabt 7 (Vine 76, 5), Helguson 6 (Agyemang 61, 5) Subs Not Used: Heaton, Stewart, Pellicori, Connolly Goals: Helguson 43 (assisted Taarabt)
Head to Head >>> Plymouth wins 24 >>> Draws 7 >>> QPR wins 17
Previous Results:
2009/10 QPR 2 Plymouth 0 (Taarabt, Stewart)
2009/10 Plymouth 1 QPR 1 (Helguson)
2008/09 QPR 0 Plymouth 0
2008/09 Plymouth 1 QPR 1 (Helguson)
2007/08 Plymouth 2 QPR 1 (Vine)
2007/08 QPR 0 Plymouth 2
2006/07 QPR 1 Plymouth 1 (Cook)
2006/07 Plymouth 1 QPR 1 (Blackstock)
2005/06 Plymouth 3 QPR 1 (Baidoo)
2005/06 QPR 1 Plymouth 1 (Gallen)
2004/05 Plymouth 2 QPR 1 (Furlong)
2004/05 QPR 3 Plymouth 2 (Furlong 2, Gallen)
2003/04 Plymouth 2 QPR 0
2003/04 QPR 3 Plymouth 0 (Gallen 2, Thorpe)
2002/03 Plymouth 0 QPR 1 (Pacquette)
2002/03 QPR 2 Plymouth 2 (Pacquette, Thomas)
1973/74 QPR 0 Plymouth 3 (League Cup)
Played for both clubs: Evelyn Lintott
Plymouth 1906-1907 >>> QPR 1907-1908
Lintott, born in Godalming in 1883, started life as a school teacher and part time footballer with Woking. He joined QPR in 1907 from Plymouth Argyle after just two appearances for the Home Park club and made his debut in a 2-2 draw against New Brompton. He played 35 games for the R’s over two seasons scoring once and becoming the club’s first ever England international in the process. QPR won the Southern League and twice played Manchester United in the new Charity Shield competition during his time with the club. While with QPR he continued his work as a teacher in Willesden.
He won eight England caps while with Rangers, five as an amateur and three as a full international player. He never lost a game for his country while with Rangers, beating Ireland 6-1 and 3-1, Holland 12-2, France 12-0, Belgium 8-2, Germany 5-1, Wales 7-1 and drawing 1-1 with Scotland.
In an effort to dig QPR out of a financial hole (as much as things change they stay the same) Lintott signed professional terms with the club that meant we could demand a fee of £1000 when he moved to Bradford City in 1908. The City manager at the time Peter O’Rourke met Lintott at Paddington station after QPR had played at Swindon Town. He later played for Leeds United between 1912 and 1914. Lintott went on to become secretary of the football association later in his career and the first head of the Professional Footballers Association.
After the outbreak of war Lintott enlisted in Leeds with the 15th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales Own) – the ‘Leeds Pals’ giving his occupation as teacher rather than professional footballer. Lintott was killed on July 1 1916 leading his troop over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and being cut down by machine gun fire. His name can be found on the Thiepval war memorial, his body was never found.
His death was reported in the Yorkshire Post at the time. The report read: “Lt. Lintott’s end was particularly gallant. He led his men with great dash and when hit the first time declined to take the count. Instead he drew his revolver and called for further effort, again he was hit but struggled on but a third shot finally bowled him over."
A true legend and hero. With thanks to queensparkrangers.co.uk, Ron Gould and bantamspast.co.uk for the information.
Links >>> Plymouth 1 QPR 1 Match Report >>> Connections and Memories
The league contains sides such as Penzance, Plymouth Parkway and the Royal Marines (tough sounding away game if ever there was one) and is part of the sixth level of English football – for reference Conference South with the likes of Hampton and Richmond Borough and Farnborough is three levels above. The team has made steady progress in the 20 team league recently with final placings of tenth, sixth and fifth before dropping back to thirteenth last year. The league was formed in 2007 after the Devon League and South Western League merged in a shake up of the English pyramid system.
Tavistock were formed in 1888 making them one of the oldest clubs in the league. A letter in the Tavistock Gazette attracted the attention of local businessmen to assemble at the Guildhall on 8 September, where a committee was elected. The club adopted a colour strip of blue and old gold, although today the club colours are red and black. The newly formed club played on the old Tavistock Grammar School playing fields. They moved to their current ground in 1949 and Langsford Park is named after the then club president Herbert Langsford who purchased the land and gave it to the club in trust.
The ground remains relatively undeveloped with a small wooden seated stand down one side made partly of old railway sleepers and a grass bank along another touchline providing an elevated view point. It’s a very picturesque ground by all accounts overlooking the river and surrounded by rolling countryside. The roof of the main stand was replaced in the early 1990s after its old curved one fell victim to high winds. It got floodlights in 1994, has an attractive looking social club which I’m sure QPR fans will make use of and new changing facilities will be opened by Neil Warnock on Monday night. It has an official capacity of 2000, with 200 seats.
In 2002/03 they finished as runners up in the South Western League, as close as they have ever come to winning the region’s top division. Their best FA Cup performance came in 1954/55 when they reached the third qualifying round before being thrashed 12-1 by Barnstable Town. In 2005/06 they entered the FA Vase for the second time in their history and won through to the last 32 before succumbing to defeat against Pickering Town from Yorkshire.
Links >>> Official Website >>> Tavistock Times and Gazette >>> Pyramid Passion detailed guide >>>Tavistock town guide
Five Minutes on Bodmin: The tour for the first team ends with a match against Bodmin Town, who have become something of a powerhouse in South West non-league circles during the last two decades and won the Cornish Senior Cup for the second year running last season. Since clinching the first ever league title in a history stretching back to 1889 when they won the South Western League in 1990/91 they have won the title four further times – the South Western League in 1993/94 and 2005/06, and the South West Peninsula League as it became in 2007/08 and 2008/09. They were runners up last season, the sixth time in the last 20 years they have been so, and also lifted the Cornwall Senior Cup. They have been runners up or champions in seven of the last eight seasons.
QPR fans may be becoming increasingly familiar with the Priory Park ground at Bodmin. Last summer we played here and won 6-0 with goals from Ephraim (2), Jamie Mackie, Antonio German, Josh Parker and an own goal. The R’s also, under the guidance of Trevor Francis, brought a strong team here in the summer of 1989 to play a friendly game that marked the Bodmin Club’s centenary. Any details of the score or QPR team that day would be well received – please use the commenting facility below. Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United with Neil Warnock in charge have all taken advantage of this picturesque setting to stage pre-season games in recent years.
Darren Gilbert has been the club’s manager since October 2008, having previously served as a player in Bodmin. Gilbert led to the club to a league and cup double in his first season in charge but rebuffed interest in his services from elsewhere to guide The Bodders to runners up spot in the last campaign.
Priory Park is actually a council owned park, with the ground in a small corner of it visible as you enter the town on the A389. Although there is a quaint main stand with seating for 400 spectators dating back to 1958 it is perfectly possible to just watch the game for nothing by approaching the pitch from the parkland to two of the open sides – although to do so would be to deprive a non-league club of much needed funds. The £2,500 required to build the stand back in the day was donated to the club by TH Dennison Esq of Toronto, an honorary freeman of the borough after whom the stand is named. The car park actually overlooks the pitch from the top of a grass bank. The club has had floodlights since 1971 and a clubhouse since 1985. The official capacity is 5,000. The club has reached the fourth round of the FA Vase twice in its history.
Links >>> Official Website >>> Pyramid Passion, detailed Bodmin guide >>> Bodmin Tourist Board >>> Cornish Guardian >>> Sleeper Train
Chances are anybody considering Wednesday night at Home Park has already been there at least once with Rangers in recent years. Really long, but relatively easy. M4 out of London then M5 down from Bristol. Follow the M5 past Exeter where it sort of becomes the A38 at a fork in the road and then winds its way through some hills, trees and Little Chefs. The ground is well signposted but basically you want the A386 into the town off the A38, stay on it forking left when the road splits and the ground appears on the left after about a mile. With the sign posts and all the rest of it this really is a difficult one to miss. About 240 miles from Loftus Road, four hours and 19 minutes at the speed limit.
There is a large car park at the ground although as they box the cars in there you could face a long wait to get out at the end unless you are one of the first ones there. We have always found ample street parking and as I’m not going in the car this year I can reveal a handy little place I have used before. Continue past the ground and then just on the left there is a tiny little inlet road with about five houses on it jutting into the park – if you get to the pub and the roundabout by the railway bridge you’ve gone too far. If you park on that road it’s free, the path at the end of it goes through the park straight to the away end and if you come out afterwards and turn left, then right at the roundabout by the pub you can find your way back to the A38 that way and miss all the match.
For Bodmin, if you’re heading out from W12 then it’s about 256 miles, and four and a half hours at the speed limit. M4 and then the M5 down to Exeter from where you can either take the A30 to the north of Dartmoor or the A38 to the south and approach from Plymouth. From the A30 leave the dual carriageway at the junction signposted Bodmin, follow the road through an industrial estate and past ASDA on the right. At the bottom of the hill turn right, then left at the mini roundabout and left again at the lights to the car park overlooking the ground. From the A38 pass the junction for A30 on left, take the second exit at the roundabout, pass the police station on the right then at the roundabout by Morrisons take the second exit, then left at the next mini roundabout and lights to the ground.
And for Tavistock, essentially it’s as you would go to Home Park in Plymouth, down the M4, M5 and A38 and then off at the Manadon roundabout at Plymouth, the same exit for Home Park. The fifth exit from that roundabout is signposted Crownhill/Tavistock and will put you on the A386 which you follow through Yelverton and Horrabridge to Tavistock. Take the second exit at the first mini roundabout in Tavistock with Morrisons on your left and the Texaco garage on the right. Keep left at the next roundabout and go straight on a the third one. Around 30 yards after the third roundabout turn left into Crowndale Road, drive past Tavistock College on the right and Tavistock AFC is the next thing you will come across. Parking at the ground is limited so supporters are encouraged to arrive early.
@loftforwords is on Twitter, and fast approaching 500 followers. Be that 500th person to jump on board with us and earn our respect. Nothing more.