Matt Jay: The right man, in the right place, at the right time

If you asked any player who’s pulled on a Torquay United shirt over the last two and a half years who they’d enjoyed playing with the most, the majority would almost certainly say ‘Matt Jay’.

Of course, he’s not the biggest or the strongest or the quickest. Jay has coped with that all his career.

After more than 330 senior appearances, he’s never too sure whether he’s a starter or a ‘finisher’ these days.

But you have to actually play with somebody on a football pitch, as opposed to watching them from the sidelines, to appreciate fully how good they are.

More than once in his career, Jay has been passed over, usually because his physique – he’s no pushover, by the way - didn’t quite fit the style that lower division football often seems to demand.

But 13 years after he made his debut as a teenager at Exeter City, Jay scored his 73rd goal in his 335th game to beat Folkestone Invicta (3-2) at Plainmoor on Saturday.

In the circumstances it was as important as that peach of a drive to down Truro City (1-0) away on Good Friday 2025, or that tidy, alert finish to clinch a 2-1 victory at Tonbridge Angels just a couple of weeks ago.

Sure, Jay must have bundled in a few over the years, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the vast majority of his goals have been sweetly struck.

The ball always travels faster than the man, and few in the current United squad quickens or sharpens up the passing like Jay.

It’s the same on the training ground or in matches.

Whether he’s picked to start or used as a sub, you know you’re going to get touch, vision, awareness – all the things that bring a smile to your face and, very often, open up opposition defences.

The story goes that Jay was in the same class at Ashburton’s South Dartmoor College as Ollie Watkins and ex-Gulls striker Jamie Reid.

They were all born in Torbay Hospital, like most South Devon babies, and they would all call Newton Abbot home.

But Reid is two years older than Watkins and Jay, and it was only at Exeter City’s Academy (Torquay had shut theirs at the time – let’s not go there!) that they really played together.

City made Jay one of the youngest captains in their history, and he responded by skippering them to League Two promotion in 2022, along with a place in the PFA Team Of The Season.

It was in January 2025 that Paul Wotton brought him back to Devon from an in-and-out couple of years at Colchester United.

Before last night’s trip to Maidenhead United, he had scored 13 goals in 42 starts and 25 sub appearances for the Gulls.

When half his games under Jimmy Ball were off the bench at the end of last season, just as they had been with Wotton, many fans wondered if he might fit the plans of United’s new manager.

But, sure enough, ‘MJ’ has got his head down, let his boots do the talking, Ball has involved him at every turn and his two goals this season have already earned six points.

Have a look at the replay of his winner against Folkestone.

He’d missed a shooting chance moments earlier, before Cody Cooke’s parried shot rebounded to him 14 yards out in the 83rd minute.

Jay had to catch the ball on the half-volley, slightly stretching with his ‘weaker’ left foot, and it would have been easy to blaze it over the bar.

But his timing and technique were both perfect – right man, right place, right time...3-2.