My name is Dave Read, I’ve been a fan of football since the early to mid 1970s and have been a regular visitor to the non-league game since. For my sins I am an Ipswich Town fan (hence the Tractor reference) although I don’t get the chance to get to many games these days. I have always followed non-league football and have spent many a day following my local sides both at home and on away days. My earliest match day experiences came from watching my two local sides, Bracknell Town and Wokingham Town in the mid 70s and I have followed their fortunes ever since. I remember my favourite players back then being Jimmy Woodcock, a natural goalscorer for Bracknell, and Kirk Corbin, a solid and reliable right back at Wokingham. One of my treasured memories was as a twelve year old being invited into the changing rooms at Wokingham’s Finchampstead Road ground to meet and get the great Jimmy Greaves to autograph my programme when he played there for Barnet. What a day that was!
I spent a lot of time watching Ipswich and Tottenham Hotspur (my brother’s team) through the ‘80s I returned to spending most of my time hanging out at Bracknell Town again in the 1990s when a work colleague of my brothers began playing for them. This was a very enjoyable time, getting to know the players, management and officials, and going on long trips away including an FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round game at, then non-league, Burton Albion (which to this day I’d die on the hill that we’d have won if Justin Day, Bracknell’s top striker, had been fully fit!) Players and managers came and went and then the next highlight came in 2000 when Bracknell Town got through to the first round proper of the FA Cup and enjoyed a memorable day at Lincoln City despite a 4-0 scoreline!
In 2000 I moved to The Netherlands for the first of my two stints working over there, working in Den Haag, Hilversum and Amsterdam and living mainly in Haarlem. I still indulged in watching football while there, league football at HFC Haarlem and local football at Koninklijke HFC Haarlem, the oldest club in Holland, and visited many other non-league grounds in an around the Den Haag and Haarlem areas. Whenever I came over to the UK I would meet up with the boys at Larges Lane and had another memorable evening when Whyteleafe came to Bracknell and suffered a 10-1 reversal to which a song based around the 12 days of Christmas was born. Fiiiive by half time! In my time living abroad I did miss another milestone in Bracknell’s history, the 2003 FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round game at Larges Lane. Gutted!
My return to the UK coincided with a downturn in fortunes with Bracknell, the all too familiar problem of a lack of finances meant many years of struggling but despite this we still had a lot of fun following the team around. Three friends of mine stepped up to the plate and volunteered to help run the club through this difficult time and without their efforts I’m not sure Bracknell Town would still be on the footballing map today. So many wonderful people threw everything they had into keeping the club going and that to me is what non-league football is all about and is one of the reasons I set up this little project. To meet and chat to the people within the non-league community and it has been a pleasure to meet many interesting people on my journey so far while also having a lot of fun along the way!
Since my return from my second stint in the Netherlands, my brother and I started going to Erith & Belvedere FC, our hometown club as both born in Erith, when we could. Again we have met some fantastic people and we were fortunate to witness a league and cup double in our first few years of going. Unfortunately a long term health issue curtailed my ability to attend many games for a few years before starting this journey and it does rear its ugly head now and again so sometimes I have to take a break, or several in last season”s case!
One of the main reasons for embarking on this journey two years ago has been down to a friend, Darrell “Duds” Freeland, who sadly passed away in 2019. I met him while working at Siemens and introduced him to watching football at Bracknell Town. He went on to be the club’s secretary and Darrell was one, along with Tom Canning and Tony Hardy, who kept Bracknell Town running through some very dark times. Eight years ago he started coming to random Erith & Belvedere games and we always said that would be something we should do in the future. Unfortunately, due to his worsening health condition, it’s something we never really had the opportunity to explore further, although, when I’ve been travelling around over the last couple of years as the Wandering Tractor, I often think to myself Duds would have loved this and sometimes do feel like he’s there with me at games. A larger than life character without a shadow of a doubt and sorely missed. This is all for you mate.
I think everyone in non-league football probably knows a Duds.
I also enjoy taking part in long distance charity walks each year whenever possible and have completed the 25km Thames Bridges Trek twice, the half marathon distance London Winter Walk and the 25km Easter Challenge in Windsor since 2022. I’ve found walking from train stations to different grounds is great training for doing these events and definitely keeps my steps totals up!
I’ll be posting on my Twitter/X social media account @wanderintractor giving details of my planned games each week so give me a follow and, if you see me at a game, pop over and have a chat!
Cheers!
Dave
*Header photo courtesy of the fantastic Andy Wicks Photography. You can check out his website here