22/03/47: Cardiff City (H)

Interesting reference in this programme about the formation on the Torquay Amateur Athletic Club that later joined up with Paignton AC 40 years ago to form the Torbay Athletic Club

The new club celebrated its 40th birthday in July of this year and below is a piece written by Dave Thomas. We have talked before asking if Torquay was once more a rugby town . In the article it states that , athletics took second place to rugby, cricket and football. I wonder if that statement might give us a clue? Or is the order the sports were written in simply mean nothing.

We moan about the lack of any help from the council for our club, but athletes in this area has been badly overlooked and the clubs involved have got on with it and done very well taking everything into consideration



A 'foot running' history as Torbay AC celebrates its 40th anniversary

By david thomas dthomas@heraldexpress.co.uk

WE ARE TEN years into the 21st Century, and still no council in South Devon has provided anything more for its athletes than a grass running track — a telling comment on the level of commitment to their young people.

Yet this year Torbay Athletic Club celebrates its 40th anniversary.
And the occasion has prompted much longer memories of athletics in Torbay, going back well into the 19th Century.'Foot racing', as it was known then, took place regularly in the 1870s.

Clubs were established in Torquay, Paignton, Newton Abbot and Exmouth, with meetings between local athletes, who also travelled further afield.

If there was a 'senior' club in the bay, it was almost certainly Paignton AC, which was formed in 1894.

In Torquay, athletics took second place to rugby, cricket and football, until St, Marychurch Harriers were formed in 1909.
Meetings were held for many years at 'Pollards Field' at Watcombe, Coombe Pafford and Plainmoor football ground, as well as the streets around St. Marychurch and Babbacombe.Before World War I races from five to 15 miles were popular, drawing large crowds especially for evening events.

More than 40 members of the Harriers trained regularly and vied for places in the team.

The Devon County AAA had already been formed and, in 1923, the Harriers' F. Lord won the one mile race at the county championships.

Paignton AC had their headquarters at Queen's Park, home to the town's cricket and rugby clubs.

And when Torquay Amateur Athletic Club was formed in 1946, they were also invited to share the Recreation Ground with the Torquay CC and Torquay Athletic RFC.

Through the 1950s and 1960s Paignton forged on to become one of the strongest road, distance and cross-country clubs in England.

Stars like Millie Gilbert, who ran 400 metres for England, the remarkable Dennis Crook, who was competitive nationally from a mile upwards, and club stalwart Trevor Honeychurch kept Paignton AC in the headlines.

At the end of the 1960s Paignton was ranked seventh in the country for distance running.

They even had a full-time professional administrator at one time.
Paignton was able to field half-a-dozen different teams in Devon County cross-country championships.

Honeychurch, whose enormous contribution spanned Paignton and Torbay ACs, recalled: "The great ambition for every distance club in those days was to get into the London-to-Brighton Relay race, restricted to only 15 clubs.

"One of the qualifying races was the Bristol-Weston super Mare-Bristol race, when teams from all over the country would turn up, with busloads of supporters."It was quite an occasion, and Paignton did get into the London-Brighton."

Unable to compete with Paignton over distances and cross-country, Torquay tended to concentrate on track athletes.
But during the 1960s there was a growing trend towards club amalgamation.

It was partly because of a desire to be competitive in the new league competitions, partly to tackle a decline in club numbers and, in Torbay, to strengthen the sport's hopes for a proper track.
So, on the stroke of midnight April 28, 1970, Torbay Athletic Club was born, after a sub-committee of eight members from the Paignton and Torquay clubs had thrashed out the details.
Over the last 40 years the Torbay club — still with only the grass track at Torre Valley North to work with — has managed to produce a steady stream of talented athletes.

Some moved across from Paignton, and among the newer names have been pole vaulter John White, sprinter Steve Morrall, who went on to play professional football for Torquay United, cross country and road specialist Barry Knight, discus thrower Lesley Mallin, middle-distance runners Martin Wilson and Helen Myers and long distance champion Andrea Wallace.

Mallin became British women's discus champion and team captain.
Knight represented his country and conducted successful campaigns on the highly competitive European cross-country circuit.

And, of course, Wallace reached the pinnacle of the sport, running in the women's 10,000 metres at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

In recent years runners like Martin Lake, Helen Dyke, who became world quadrathlon champion, Kairn Stone, Wendy Urban, Steve Waldron and Daniel Hyde have carried the flag for Torbay AC.

The club, which continues to nurture a group of juniors under coach Steve Cottle, also organises the popular Torbay Half Marathon, which will resume in 2011 after a one-year break.
It's been a long, enjoyable but not always easy journey since those early days on the streets of St. Marychurch in the 1870s.
A hundred and 40 years on, the athletes of South Devon still have no proper running track to call their own.

If they want to progress in the sport, they have to move up the A380 to Exeter Arena.

So in many ways it's quite an achievement in itself that Torbay Athletic Club is still going strong — and celebrating its 40th birthday this summer.

Strange that this doesn't mention Torquay Athletic Club formed in or around 1875 - the tenuous reason for the separate Torquay Athletic Rugby Football Club claiming that it was formed in 1875, when it wasn't formed until 1886 - on the merger of the Excelsior and Ellacombe clubs.

At least the South Devon League has only stolen one year, not eleven!