Tavare

Sevenoaks Town  0  Sheppey United  3

Isthmian League  – First Division South East

Admission / Programme - £10 / £2

Every once in a while complacency gets the better of me.

Without a care in the World, I left the house just before 10.30am on a fine and mild Saturday morning, with a trip to Hanworth Villa firmly on the agenda.

I think because we have moved into a warmer weather period, I chose not to even take a cursory look at the forecast, and it would ultimately prove to be a problem.

It would have been about the Luton area, I was sat in a traffic jam that had delayed my projected arrival time until 1.45pm, when I chose to have quick look on Twitter at the games status. It turned out that a precautionary pitch inspection had been passed as the overnight rain (that I was not aware of) had left the ground a little on the soggy side.

It then became apparent as I dropped onto the M25, that the rain had started again, not heavy incessant rain, but more prolonged sharp showers. The journey down to the M3 exit was a bit on the stop / start side of things, but again, looking at the roads and the sky, I did start to wonder whether we might have a problem.

It was as I was pulling into the car park that I saw players leaving the ground, and it was quite clear now that the game had been postponed, literally moments before I’d arrived, so now I had a bit of a problem and needed a Plan B. When I say Plan B, normally I would travel with one, but today, not so, and with time absolutely not on my side, I needed to move fast.

My first thought was the plastic pitch at Ascot United, which wasn’t too far away, but they weren’t at home. Something in the back of my mind though was telling me that Ascot shared with someone, but I couldn’t recall who it was. I did some checking but couldn’t fathom it out, although later that evening I discovered it was a team called Lyne who played in some pretty low down Surrey League, and yes, they were playing at home!

So, I needed nearest game that was on, ideally on a plastic, at a ground I’d not been to, preferably at Step 4 or above. It was Sevenoaks Town, and the sat nav said I could make it with ten minutes to spare before kick off.

I’ll be honest, I did drive a little bit quicker than I ordinarily would have done, and the technology did it’s job, I was pulling off the M25 into Sevenoaks at the projected time. And despite a bit of a queue to get into the Northern edges of the town, I was soon through and parking up at the road side, ten minutes before kick-off. It was a quick scramble up a grass bank, and then along a slightly muddy track to the turnstiles, through which I clicked precisely five minutes before the start time, with the players lined up ready to enter the field.

Sevenoaks then, I’d done no research, I knew very little about the club, or the town, but I did know something about it that had a sporting connection, and this is a little out of leftfield.

When I was in was in the Sixth Form I developed a bit of a passion for cricket, I can remember becoming fascinated with the game, and for a couple of seasons I would buy the Playfair Annual so I could keep abreast of all things statistical (it was cheaper and an easier browse than Wisden!). The only games you could really watch on television at that time were the Test Matches, and I can remember being on my first lads holiday in Ingoldmells, sat in a caravan watching Graham Gooch score his 333 against India on a little portable set.

Anyway, a player who came back onto the international scene around that time in an ill-fated Ashes series, albeit briefly for one game, was Chris Tavare, and it was one of those names that I suddenly remembered hearing from when I was a small child back in the Seventies, no doubt from having the television on in the background. Curiosity got the better of me, added to the fact he had an unusual surname, so I decided to do my own research. No internet back then of course, so it was all down to what I could find in books, and so I soon discovered that the man they nicknamed ‘The Snail’ was infamous for his somewhat defensive style of play.

Famed for spending a considerable amount of time at the crease without scoring many runs, his effort of scoring 35 runs in six and a half hours in Madras was one of his most remarkable moments. It didn’t matter though, according to Playfair, the man who started his career at Kent, and who studied at Sevenoaks Schools (you see where this is going now?) before going on to Oxford University, was now at Somerset and on the County scene, banging the runs out.

Somerset at that time had an opener called Jimmy Cook who was an absolute run machine, a South African who at the time was denied the chance to play Test Cricket due to the ban, while along with Tavare they also had the complex character that was Peter Roebuck, a man who post cricket had a successful journalistic career, but took his own life in the midst of allegations of abuse to minors.

For one season, my obsession was such that every day I would check Ceefax in the evening and analyse all of the cricket scorecards, and in a notebook, record every player that had scored a century throughout the season in the domestic game. Jimmy Cook lead the way, but what I also did was keep a record of every innings played by Tavare, and to be fair, he scored a serious amount of runs. I wish I had still had that notebook…..

It just so happened a few years ago, when Sevenoaks Town got promoted to the Isthmian League, it jolted my memory and I was reminded of Tavare and his education at the school where only money and sheer brilliance no doubt gets you onto the register! I did a bit of research and it seemed post retirement from cricket, Tavare had retuned to Sevenoaks to teach Biology at the school, with the obvious choices of professional coaching and journalism being a field he chose not to go into. Clearly a studious man, he was back in academia once again, this of course, a man who also while playing for Somerset, spent the off-season working for the Ministry of Agriculture looking at the impact of insects on the farming community!

Let’s get back to the football.

Sevenoaks Town won the Kent County League in 2003, and with it earned promotion to the Kent League, where they remained until 2018 when a Championship winning season saw them promoted to the Isthmian League. An inaugural campaign tenth placed finish in 2018-19 was their last full season before two Covid hit years, whereas last season they managed a thirteenth placed finish. This season they sit on the edges of the play-offs.

The ground is fairly close to the railway station known as Bat & Ball (named with Tavare in mind I wonder?), which is located on the very Northern edges of Sevenoaks. With a 4G surface, the ground is blessed with a couple of seated areas on the North side of the complex, which flank a small covered standing area, while the other areas of cover are a modest sized terraced area to the left of the dugouts on the opposite side, while behind the West goal is a small seated area albeit mainly for officials.

What I did like though was the large bank that sits behind the East goal, which if you are felling tight, offers a great view of the proceedings. The dressing rooms and a tea / booze bar sat behind the West goal, adjacent to the small stand previously mentioned.

Visiting Sheppey United, who were just above the hosts in the table, had a decent following in the crowd of 214, and they went back to the island happy with what they saw. The game was goalless at half time but Josh Wisson opened the scoring on 64 minutes before Danny Leonard got a decisive second with ten minutes remaining. The victory was sealed in injury time when Jake Embery got the third goal for the visitors.

The journey back wasn’t great, I queued for ages at the Dartford Tunnel, and then spent a considerable amount of time in stationery traffic once again around Luton. It also dawned on me twelve hours too late that I’d forgotten to pay my Dart Charge, so I’ll look forward to that fine arriving.

So not the day I was planning, and as I unlocked the door at 9pm, not the arrival home I was planning either, but, a recue job in the end on the back of being a victim of my own complacency.

And, I never thought the day would come where I could devote the large part of a blog to the sporting and biological legend that is Chris Tavare!