Torquay United boss Gary Owers reflects on a bad 24 hours after one match called off and another moved

Torquay United head coach Gary Owers had 24 hours to forget after a scouting mission to Kent proved less than fruitful and another game he was aiming to take in was moved.

Owers, whose side is battling to avoid relegation from the National League, made the 225-mile journey to Maidstone on Tuesday to watch his Saturday opponents take on league leaders Macclesfield.

But, despite that game being scheduled for Maidstone's 3G pitch, it was called off at short notice in unusual circumstances...because the home team was unable to field a side.

Their players, a number of whom had to journey across the Dartford Bridge, were held up by a serious crash which was causing horrendous traffic delays lasting up to three hours.

Only five fit players managed to make it to the Gallagher Stadium in time, meaning the match referee had no choice but to call the game off, much to the chagrin of the Torquay manager, who was in a nearby McDonalds getting some food after a gruelling journey of more than seven hours from South Devon.

To make things even worse, more bad luck would afflict Owers on Wednesday, as he told Sky Sports News: "We've got Maidstone on Saturday so I thought I would pop along. Every little thing we can get in our favour would help so it was a bit of a scouting mission.

"I left Torquay at 11.40 yesterday [Tuesday] morning and got to Maidstone at 7.10pm to be told the game had been delayed for an hour.

"Myself and my chief scout, we got stuck on the M4 for an hour, but that was another incident, so we carried on. Stewards told us the game would kick off at 8.45pm, so we toddled off and had a McDonald's.

"Then it was announced the game was called off so our "Happy Meal" turned into a bit of a grumpy meal.

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"We travelled back to Bristol overnight and I've been to another game this afternoon, would you believe, to be told it had been relocated, so I've had a double whammy. I'll be watching another game tonight so will hopefully arrive back in Torquay about 7am on Friday."

Owers took over from Kevin Nicholson as Torquay manager early in the 2017-18 season, but the former Bath City boss has been unable to engineer any significant improvement from the Gulls, who are 23rd in the National League and nine points adrift of Barrow in the last survival place with only 11 games remaining.

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The former Bristol City and Sunderland midfielder spends many hours on Britain's motorway network, both scouting and travelling to matches from one end of the country to the other, and admits those long hours are something he has learned to accept.

He added: "Scouting is part of the job - I did nine hours each way to Stockport a couple of weeks ago to watch them play Maidenhead, and thankfully when we played Maidenhead on the Saturday we got a result, so it can be worth the time and effort.

"We have had Maidstone watched before last night, that was just another opportunity to see them first hand. I'll just sit down and watch some video footage now."