Away On Saturday: Plymouth - the worst trip I've ever been on!

Plymouth Argyle 1-1 Mansfield Town

Sky Bet League Two

Saturday 1st February 2014

As the 'Sloop John B' song goes... this is the worst trip I've ever been on!

The teams enter the pitch at Home Park (Photo: Martin Shaw).

During my three years working at Mansfield Town, it'd be an understatement to say the club were notoriously tight and 'penny-pinching' was commonplace.

The club secretary was, bizarrely, part-time - even though he had one of the most important roles, the playing budget was halved ahead of the 2014/15 season, and a bloke who used to run a sweet shop and just so happened to be the chairman's brother-in-law was, effectively, acting as Chief Executive and desperate to make an impression!

So many things which happened beggared belief including the matchday arrangements for away games which got progressively worse as time passed.

For this game with Plymouth Argyle, the club had agreed for the 'handy man' (who actually had zero interest in football and was later made redundant) to drive myself and the photographer to the longest away game of the season. Having travelled to quite a few games of my own accord, begged, stole and borrowed lifts from others at various points and even been lumped on Supporters Buses as well, the 'pool car' was the club being generous!

Anyway, having made arrangements to leave at 7.00am, the journey to the South-West should have been straightforward - after all, the route was pretty much motorways all the way with Home Park being situated on one of the main 'A' roads into Plymouth.

Sadly, it didn't turn out to be the case.

The club photographer, who had a full-time job of his own, had been working a night shift the previous night and therefore fell asleep pretty quickly after we departed. With myself not exactly being an 'early bird' it wasn't long before I nodded off as well.

The Mansfield fans (who probably had a better trip) inside Home Park (Photo: Martin Shaw).

Now the driver was a pleasant enough guy but no conversationalist. Unfortunately, he had zero sense of direction and probably didn't know who we were even playing - other than it being an away game, let alone where in the country Plymouth was. So he just drove... and drove... and drove!

When myself and the photographer woke up around an hour or so after leaving we were between, erm, Northampton and Milton Keynes - still heading south on the M1 (but towards London) and when it was put to the driver why we were going this way, we were told 'I'm just the driver!'.

It was reassuringly un-reassuring and an impromptu cross-country trip followed to get 'back on track' - albeit in the right direction this time and we eventually joined the M5 some time later.

That should have been the end of drama. We were still expected to get to Home Park at least an hour before kick-off, but in reality, we hadn't known what we'd let ourselves in for.

We finally reached the outskirts of Plymouth around 1.30pm and, with the dashboard lights flashing now to signal a lack of oil, our driver decided to turn off and take a shortcut to try and get to the stadium which, otherwise, was about 2-3 miles further down the road.

Somehow we ended up slap, bang in the middle of Plymouth City Centre surrounded by hundreds of folk who were out doing some weekend shopping at the aptly named 'Drake Circus' - though it's fair to say it wasn't the only f**king circus in town. To cap it all off, we then ended up in a tiny cul-de-sac where our driver treated us to a 33-point turn - all of this whilst kick-off was starting to edge nearer.

Eventually, we arrived at Home Park with around 20 minutes to spare after our marathon journey!

The game itself couldn't have gone much worse either because in typical Mansfield fashion, we managed to do what we'd done for most of the campaign - put ourselves in a promising position only to throw it away in the dying seconds of the game!

The team produced a decent enough performance with Matt Rhead putting us ahead on 72 minutes - bringing hope that we'd get all three points. Backed on by their noisy home crowd, however, the Pilgrims rallied which meant by the beginning of six minutes of injury-time we were defending doggedly, albeit deeper and deeper.

In the very last of those minutes, the worst happened.

Nathan Thomas (who we later signed) twisted and turned Lee Beevers several times on the right-hand side causing the full-back to slip. He eventually played a cross into the box which Lewis Alessandra knocked past Alan Marriott to equalise. It was gut-wrenching, it was horrible and it felt like a defeat. It was, pretty much, the very last kick of the game.

Worse still was that Beevers had potentially dislocated his shoulder as he landed - something which he had a history of doing, and it delayed our departure in the 'pool car' as it was anticipated that the full-back might have to go to Plymouth Hospital at one point but, from memory, that never came to fruition and he didn't need our driver to take him back home!

With a dodgy shoulder, that would have been probably the worst thing for him as well.

Manager Paul Cox reflects on the draw (Photo: Martin Shaw).

On a previous trip to Plymouth (with Doncaster Rovers in the Carling Cup in the 2007/08 season), I travelled with someone by car who had Meatloaf songs 'on loop' as we travelled home - even though it was a six-hour trip, we only got through about three of them!

Whilst I vividly recall 'Bat Out Of Hell' in that era, it's fair to say if they'd been on loop on this occasion, it would be anything but 'Paradise By The Dashboard Lights' because they were flashing the whole of the way back home!

For some reason, the driver never did take us to another away game! I can't think why...