Badcock column: 385 miles… treks like that have always been the norm

(Photo: Simon O’Connor)
By Matt Badcock
IN FAIRNESS, the clue is in the title: National League. As in, not local. And, when you or your team play in this division there is an acceptance a lot of miles are going to be put in.
And, so it was, last Tuesday as 20 Gateshead supporters made the 385-mile trip to see their team concede a late equaliser at Torquay United.
Leading through Jordan Preston’s first-half goal, the inevitability of Sean McGinty’s equaliser will be familiar for away followers everywhere.
On BBC Radio 5, one fan explained how his journey had started by catching the Metro into Newcastle on Monday evening for his Mega Bus connection that left for London in the early hours of Tuesday. Hands up if you wished you loved something as much as these die-hards.
The fixture was rearranged to Tuesday at the request of both clubs, which is fair enough. That’s their right and boss Steve Watson will no doubt be pleased it’s been crossed off the calendar. Long midweek journeys are a fact of life of football at this level. As are treks across the country on a Saturday.
Now this is coming from someone who has enjoyed (wasted? Ed) many an hour travelling to watch football. On one occasion there was a 2:30am meet at a local garage to begin the, quite literally, 24-hour adventure to Barcelona to watch England play…Andorra. Safe to say it wasn’t a game to trouble too many Top Ten lists.
A mate once drove, by himself, to Burton Albion on a Tuesday night to watch Farnborough Town get stuffed 4-0 before crawling home at 50mph wincing every time he negotiated a bump because the front suspension broke on the way. His heater matrix stopped working another time on the way back from Liverpool, resulting in frantic wiping down the windscreen with a scarf every couple of minutes for the best part of 200 miles.
In a weird way, the long journeys back from a hammering at some football outpost trying to stay awake as junction after junction passes by is what it’s all about being a football fan. The Gateshead contingent at Torquay will wear it as a badge of honour.
The fact their team let in a late goal only adds to the legend of the story. No Ebbsfleet United fan will forget their long trip to Barrow a few years back where the team were held up by a baked-bean spillage on the motorway resulting in a 9pm kick-off!
Originally the Heed were supposed to make the trip to the south-west on December 23 – two days before Christmas.
The schedulers are never going to come up with the perfect fixture list. There are many external factors to consider throughout the season, other major events, match-ups with bigger clubs or rivals, clubs requesting certain fixtures at certain times – it’s an impossible job to keep everyone happy every week.
But this Saturday’s fixtures – and the original Torquay v Gateshead clash – seem to have been penned in with the Christmas shopper in mind.
Ebbsfleet are at AFC Fylde (262 miles one-way). Macclesfield down at Bromley (210). Aldershot make the trip to Guiseley (230), Maidenhead nip up to Hartlepool (269), Tranmere come down to Sutton (240). The two longest trips are for Barrow, who will have plenty of time to fill on the way to Woking (297), while Dover make the short hop to Wrexham (286).
In all, those round trips work out at 3,588 miles – for scale, it’s 3,459 miles from London to New York. Merry Christmas!
Football takes itself so seriously that it sometimes forgets the people it exists for. We’re seeing in the Premier League how fans are a distant second when it comes to games moved around by TV. But without people paying money to walk through the gates, the whole Non-League model collapses. People are growing weary with so much that goes on at the top level of the game and Non-League football can’t afford the same.
There’s also an argument for the players. As the festive season approaches the demands become greater. There is very little turnaround between games – although this year isn’t as bad as it can be – on top of what is already a very heavy workload. We ask them to spend very little time with their families so we can be entertained.
Many National League clubs are finding the benefits of using trains for away games rather than coaches. Maidstone even found they could get to Barrow and back on the same day earlier this season with boss Jay Saunders preferring his squad to sleep in their own bed the night before.
For Gateshead’s players and fans it would have been a case of getting their head down the day after with most not arriving back until 6:30am. At least it didn’t get called off.