Torquay Athletic

Yes, and I expect Thea has a hand it somehow as well!

On the contrary, Gullone, I'm sure a few of us world be interested in old Tics' programmes on an occasional basis.

Scribbler talks about a recent game against St Mary's. I take this to mean a team from St Mary's Hospital, one of the London teaching hospitals (now part of Imperial College). The London medical schools (Guy's, Thomas's, Bart's and their modern incarnations) compete for the Hospitals Cup which is just about the oldest rugby competition in the world. It was also the only club competition (outside of sevens) mentioned by those old yearbooks. There may have been one or two county cups but they were few and far between.

And, with Torquay Athletic's opposition on this particular occasion being Devonport Services, there's mention of inter-services rugby with the army, navy and air force battling it out at Twickenham. Not forgetting the universities - well Oxford and Cambridge - and you've soon got a fair idea of what once constituted the upper echelons of the sport. I found a copy of the Daily Worker Football Annual 1949/50. I was surprised it also covered rugby. Rugby League. No mention of the union variant.

Back to 1938 and Exeter will be the next "guests" at The Rec. Torquay playing Exeter at rugby union these days is totally unthinkable. It would probably be banned on grounds of health and safety. I'm trying to think of a football equivalent. Buckland Athletic facing Everton, maybe? Good grief, if Torquay were even to play a team called St Mary's now they'd most likely be from the Isles of Scilly. Or even St Marychurch.

Club president: W S Brockman. Does this mean that, of the two benefactors behind local cricket competitions, one was a ruggger man and the other a soccer man?

I'd not realised that Cobley's was a fish and chip empire with shops in other towns as well as Belgrave Road, Torquay. Nor that it was possible for one man - Harold Bowden - to simultaneously operate as a hairdresser, chiropodist and tobacconist. You wonder what other services he may have provided on the side.

I don't think the Meadfoot Inn is so much of a rugby pub these days.

I wasn't going to turn this one into another tragical history tour, but seeing as Barty has taken us back to the 1950s and gullone to the 1930s....

I'll go back to some interesting correspondence in the Torquay Times in early 1880 - actually referring to the Torquay and South Devon club rather than Torquay Athletic.

Someone had written in saying it was a disgrace that Torquay could not beat a club from a small town like Teignmouth. Yes, people loudly proclaiming their shame at the performance of Torquay's football club was not something that started with internet forums or 606.

The reply from the club captain was that there just weren't enough posh boys in Torquay to put together a decent rugby team.

This was not at the time a "soccer v rugby" thing. In the 1870s, only posh people played any football - the workers were too busy working.

In the 80s, football exploded as a participation and spectator sport. Soccer was the working man's game in most of the country but Devon was like South Wales and the strip of Lancashire / Yorkshire that is now Rugby League territory in that rugby was very much the working man's game.

During the 20th century - and a huge kick was given when TARFC left working class Plaimnoor for the Rec - Torquay settled more into the soccer/rugby class divide common in many other places.

I suspect that Torquay Athletic now trains up hundreds of young players who leave to go to University and never come back - or at least not until their playing days are over.

We have talked before about how the socio-economic decline of Torquay has negatively impacted Torquay United through emigration of a huge chunk of the fan base. I suspect it has hit Torquay Athletic harder as it is the playing base that has emigrated.

Just like in 1880, there just aren't enough posh boys in Torquay to put together a decent rugby team. Plus ça change.

I have in front of me the Sunday Independent dated October 12 2014. There is a rugby report headlined "Sprangle gets hat-trick as Tiverton see off Torquay". Under that lies the bleak detail:

Tiverton 41 Torquay Athletic 6.

Disgraceful, Sir. I remain your humble servant. B.A.R.Downs Esq, Lummaton House, Torquay, Devon



I hope Felix doesn't mind being paraphrased from what he recently said elsewhere on the web (BTPIR, I think, as part of an interesting discussion about Wasps moving to Coventry). His basic point was that rugby union is both Oxbridge-dominated and London-orientated.

I wouldn't go that far myself; certainly not in the era of professional rugby. But the game tends to be "posher" (to pick up on Jon's terminology) than football. Rather than "Oxbridge" I'd now veer towards "corporate"; rather than outright London dominance (there is a skew in that direction of course), I'd suggest enclaves in the more affluent parts of most parts of the country - from which clubs such as Sale, Newcastle and Leeds grew. Sheffield is a good example at a lower level; two clubs both located in the leafy suburbs on the main roads to the Peak District.

But we know about Leicester and Northampton; Bath and Gloucester. Places where rugby union has wider appeal than elsewhere - isn't Lee Mansell a big Gloucester RFC supporter? And that wider (as opposed to mass) appeal is a factor to be considered throughout the south west. Travelling around the region, rugby sometimes strikes me as a "posh" activity; other times anything but. If, say, across much of England rugby union is a 10% minority sport compared to football; it's 25% through nearly all of the south west from Land's End to Tewkesbury (I make these figures up, based on little evidence, solely to illustrate a point).



Yes, you're right. With all sorts of mini-rugby and age group teams, there must be hundreds of young people playing rugby union in South Devon. A fair chunk will move away; others will play the game to a certain age only. I wonder whether, more generally, there are concerns about the tail off in participation in adulthood? There appear to be as many rugby clubs around as ever; but are there as many 2nd, 3rd and 4th XVs as there once were?

Would this, in turn, affect the playing prospects or motivations of South Devonians moving to another area? A further hunch is that many clubs, which were once "social", are now "competitive" in a way that is increasingly similar to football. This means that, if you want to continue your rugby, you're best taking it seriously rather than purely as a Saturday night piss-up. I sense that, for many, playing rugby may be an essentially childhood activity prior to taking up five-a-side football as a twenty-something with the lads from the office or practice.

The university business is intriguing. It must now affect football far more than it once did. How many of those well-scrubbed kids doing their Sunday-morning Soccer School progress to higher education? Loads I suspect. And you can see it in the SDL and Peninsula match reports: so-and-so has "returned to university"; the normal goalkeeper was "unavailable due to university commitments". Gosh, once-upon-a-time that would have earned an individual the name of "The Prof". Now it's nearly half the team.



People leave South Devon; others move there. Torquay Athletic, you imagine, "imported" rugby players over the years. What about all those Welsh teachers who stayed in Devon after training at St Luke's College? That's a supply line which has dried up; there must be others which have also declined.

Or are Torquay Athletic simply not adept at playing the game of semi-professional rugby? Or even, for that matter, not particularly willing to embrace the process of a game which must now resemble particular aspects of non-league football? To this effect I'm assuming that in rugby you have a "mixed economy" of contracted players (full- and part-time), players who are paid by-the-game and those who are strictly amateur. Where do local clubs fit into this arrangement when it comes to 1st XV players? Look at the league tables and you'd assume Barnstaple, Brixham, Exmouth and Newton Abbot are the "payers" in Devon rugby below the level of Exeter and Plymouth. Maybe there are smaller amounts of cash at a lower level too with Teignmouth having slightly more than Torquay Athletic?

Possibly TARFC are simply skint; resolutely amateur by tradition; or unashamedly too posh to trouble themselves with such grubby matters. I really don't know; it would be interesting to learn more. I'm sure we'd welcome thoughts from anybody associated with the Tics both with respect to contemporary as well as historical matters.

Mind you, there's also the possibility that the sea air down at The Rec makes one somnolent. As such a move there may not have done Torquay United any good at all. We may have ended up dozing in the sun watching home league defeats against Tiverton Town.

Heaven forbid.