Feature: Where Are They Now? #1

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Feature: Where Are They Now? #1

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This article originally featured in Highway to Hele #1, published August 2014.

Current issues and subscription bundles available from www.highwaytohele.bigcartel.com.

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Words by Dan Rawley

Photo by Danny Cooke

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Regardless of their success or popularity at the club, hero or flop, all players to don United’s distinctive yellow eventually shuffle out of Plainmoor’s revolving door and on to pastures new. It is perhaps particularly hard to keep tabs on all ex-players at a club like Torquay where change is almost continuous, but here at Highway to Hele Towers we’ve sent out some feelers to track down four ex-United favourites.

ARJAN VAN HEUSDEN
GULLS CAREER: 2002-05
APPS: 47
AGE: 41
CURRENT LOCATION: RIJNWOUDE, SOUTH HOLLAND
After his Torquay contract ended in 2005, the giant Dutchman moved back to Holland at the behest of his wife. He dropped into amateur football with Rijnburgse Boys initially and in 2007-08 joined FC Lisse, with whom he became national amateur champions. Two seasons later he moved to SV ARC in his hometown of Alphen aan den Rijn (also the birthplace of World Cup finalist Johnny Heitinga).
Van Heusden cites “social” reasons as the motivation for his entry into amateur football, rather than pursuing another professional contract once back in the Netherlands. By August 2013 he was working as a policeman in Rotterdam, a job that he says has always interested him and to which he credits managing to avoid a “black hole” after retiring from football. “I haven’t felt nostalgia for football, even though it was a beautiful time,” he said in 2013. “Since I retired, I’ve been back to [first club] Port Vale once [but that’s it].” In May this year he became the goalkeeping coach for Koudekerk, another amateur side.
JIMMY AGGREY
GULLS CAREER: 1998-2001
APPS: 95
GOALS: 2
AGE: 35
CURRENT LOCATION: TORBAY/LONDON
An interesting character to say the least. Despite some believing Aggrey had the talent to play in the Championship, the defender was allowed to leave Plainmoor by Roy McFarland in 2001 and joined Neville Southall’s Dover Athletic. Short spells at Taunton Town and Harrow Borough followed before Gary Johnson snapped up the Hammersmith native for Yeovil. He was part of the squad that won the Conference but failed to hold down a regular place in the Glovers’ side and soon left for Welsh outfit Total Network Solutions, playing against Manchester City in the UEFA Cup.
By 2004 he had moved to Ireland to join Bohemians, but after a debut goal his fortunes headed south and he was once again on the move the following summer to Woking. An unsuccessful spell there, punctuated by a three-game loan at Southport, proved to be the rather anticlimactic finale to an intriguing career.
Aggrey retired from football in 2006 to pursue an acting career, and later that year he appeared in Sky’s Dream Team, playing an African midfielder called Willam Laurent Dioup. He has apparently even enjoyed an Eastenders cameo as a shady gangster, though the internet provides no evidence of this.
Either way, Jimmy had already been a TV star before arriving at Plainmoor, as part of the Chelsea youth team featured in Channel 4’s 1997 documentary Football Dreams which followed apprentices’ attempts to earn a professional deal. Typically, Aggrey’s cameos involved being shouted at by coach Graham Rix and then, playing as a midfielder, suffering the humiliation of being substituted for the reserve goalkeeper during an under-19 tournament in Spain.
He may have been absent from football for almost a decade now but the defender’s cult hero status endures: a “Jimmy Aggrey Appreciation Society” on Facebook, set up in 2010, currently has 240 members. Aggrey himself, delighted by his continued popularity, was apparently keen to meet his fans in Dublin in 2011, but the plans appear to have come to naught.
Jimmy’s Facebook page reveals a fittingly eclectic social calendar. In 2008 he attended a Torquay Old Boys’ event hosted by Paul Gibbs at Appleby’s, as well entering Pro Evolution Soccer tournament in Brentford. Three years later he was in Paignton’s Palace Theatre to witness “A Night at the Moulin Rouge” and soon after he surfaced at Kingston upon Thames to take in a house music event. It is, then, difficult to pin the man down.

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GARRY NELSON
GULLS CAREER: 1996-97
APPS: 34
GOALS: 8
AGE: 53
CURRENT LOCATION: ESSEX
Nelson’s spell at Torquay is probably best remembered for his popular Left Foot in the Grave diary, which chronicled the Gulls’ 1996-97 season. Torquay would prove to be his last club, and Nelson turned down the offer of another season as player-coach to become the commercial executive of the PFA, leaving the position in 2001 to join the ill-fated ITV Digital.
Since then, the 53-year-old has held lofty positions at various companies, including Oakwood Promotions Ltd (managing director), Leisure Link Golf Holidays (Chairman) and AllClear Insurance (head of marketing). A busy man, then, although a cursory glance at his Twitter feed reveals Nelson had time to make no fewer than 12 (twelve) lame “Right said Fred” jokes during the World Cup this summer mocking Brazil’s hapless striker.
The former forward still plays veteran football in his local league in Southend and admits his business career doesn’t compare favourably to football: “It is nowhere near as much fun, working every day,” he told the Football League website in 2009. “As a player or coach you have the weekly focus of a game, which you can influence to some degree. And there are some amazing highs which keep you motivated. In business it is a lot more flat-lined, because you don’t have the terrific highs or crushing lows, which thankfully I didn’t have many of. A lot of it is dealing with people’s problems.”
Despite heading in the opposite direction of many ex-pros who go into coaching, Garry has also completed his UEFA A Licence and has run sessions in Hong Kong. In 2004, Nelson was included in Plymouth Argyle’s “Team of the Century”.
CHRIS MYERS
GULLS CAREER: 1986-88; 1990-93; 1994 (LOAN)
APPS: 111
GOALS: 7
AGE: 45
CURRENT LOCATION: LANCASHIRE
A midfielder, Myers began his career in TQ1 in 1986 but after featuring in the Great Escape as a 17-year-old he was released in 1988. However, the local lad was re-signed in 1990 and stayed for three years as a first team regular. A £60,000 switch to Dundee United didn’t really work out and Myers’ last spell at Torquay came in 1994 when the Tangerines sent him back on loan.
The son of another ex-Gull, Cliff Myers, Chris went on to play for Wrexham, Scarborough, Exeter, Dorchester, Taunton and Dawlish, finally retiring in 2008 aged 39. While at Taunton he opened and ran a golf shop in Preston, Paignton called “The Golf Locker” with Kenny Veysey, which broke ground in 1999. By the time of his retirement he had been player-manager and Football in the Community coach for Dawlish since 2003, and at the time of accepting the Dawlish job was working as a postman in Torquay.
After cutting his ties with Dawlish and moving to Lancashire, Myers became interim manager of Burscough in 2009, but in perhaps the greatest possible example of a “poisoned chalice”, the club were relegated in his first game in charge. Myers’ son Spencer has been on Everton’s books for the last five years and currently plays left-back for the Blues’ under-18s; should he make it to the professional ranks at Goodison Park, Spencer would become the third generation of his family to make it as a pro footballer.
Though now living up country, working as a retained firefighter for the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service since 2008, Chris and his family remain staunch Gulls fans - in February this year he told the Herald Express: “We follow the Gulls’ results every week, and we have everything crossed that they stay up.”
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