Market Stalls & Prisons

Tavistock  0  Willand Rovers  3

Southern League – Division One South

Admission / Programme - £10 / No

Mrs H’s Aunty Jilly runs a stall on the Pannier Market in Tavistock, and it’s a place we’ve been to a couple of times in recent years to pay her a visit.

However, those visits have never coincided with a time when Tavistock were playing a home game, and for someone with traits like I’ve got, visiting a place more than once and not actually getting to see a game becomes a bit of a niggling issue. Yes, Tavistock was starting to bug me a little bit if I’m honest.

Tavistock sits on the road betwixt Plymouth and North Devon, and can be accessed via a few routes, but we elected to go via Okehampton (Master H wanted to visit the castle) and then drop down off the A30. It’s a lovely town, but on a Bank Holiday Monday nowt is open, and Aunty Jilly’s market was bolted shut, so we took a quick detour down to Yelverton and then up to Princetown via Dartmoor to take in some scenery, look out for some escaped prisoners, and kill a bit of time.

Time was duly killed, but no sheep were harmed and no prisoners looked to be on the run from HMP Dartmoor, so once we’d got some provisions from a supermarket it was on to the ground for the game against Willand Rovers, who live at the side of the M5 next to Cullompton.

The ground is Tavistock is set down a narrow lane on the South side of the town, just off the Plymouth Road. It has a very rural feel about it, albeit it is located next to a bus depot. Parked up behind the goal, the clubhouse is on the outside of the ground, so I popped in for a pint and received a very friendly welcome from the staff who were most curious to know why a chap from Derbyshire had come to watch Tavistock!

Anyroadup, what’s this Tavistock club all about then?

Historically a South Western League club from the early fifties, they became founder members of the South West Peninsula League in 2007, starting in the Premier Division before being relegated to the Eastern Division in 2014.

They bounced straight back to the Premier, finishing third, first, second and then first again before being promoted to the Western League Premier Division. The first two seasons were a Covid write off, but then last season they went on to win it, pipping Exmouth Town to the title, and with it gaining promotion to the Southern League. We actually saw the game at the same stage last season when the two sides met in Exmouth for what was effectively a league title showdown in front of a huge crowd.

This season, before the game, they sat in a play-off place in the Southern Division, which considering the journey they’ve been on is quite an achievement. But could they get past a Willand side that weren’t 100% clear of relegation?

Before the game, let’s talk about the ground. You enter behind the goal and on the side to your left is the tea bar and a huge two story dressing rooms and office building, with two Atcost type stands positioned in front of it. On the opposite side is a small area of cover that sits between the dugouts, whereas one end was out of bounds and the end where you enter sees a grass bank leading down to the pitch side hard standing.

As I said earlier, it does have a rural feel to it, and some of the scenery is lovely, but what they aren’t blessed with are large crowds that their progress on the field warrants. The average this season is 158, with a high of 301 at New Year against neighbours Bideford. For a Bank Holiday Monday game against Willand, 188 turned up to watch it.

The game was all over by half time, in fact it was all over after twenty minutes. Tavistock were poor and went in at the break three goals down thanks to goals from Ryan Guppy (4, 19) and Jack Rice-Lethaby (15). Tavistock never looked like coming back from that and the second half in terms of a spectacle wasn’t one that will live long in the memory.

That said, Tavistock are a super club who have come a huge way in a short space of time. It will be really interesting to see where they ‘level off’, but if they do get in the play-offs and do make it to the Premier Division, it will be fascinating to see how they perform.

Dartmoor was traversed again on the way back to the Dawlish area, but this time heading South down to the A38 at Ashburton. However, we were soon back, only four days later, Aunty Jilly was expecting us to visit, on a day when everything was open!