Bishop’s Cleeve’s two-goal FA Cup hero Ross Langworthy said it was the best day of his footballing life after helping his club to a stunning 3-0 win over Torquay United.

The 31-year-old striker scored a goal in each half and also set up Ethan Dunbar for a third as the Southern League Division One South side marched into the third qualifying round and a home tie with Chesham United on Saturday 28th September.

The emphatic win against a club who have spent the majority of their 125 years in the Football League sparked sheer joy at a packed Kayte Lane.

“The scenes after the game were brilliant, the atmosphere was top-notch,” said Bishop’s Cleeve manager Paul Collicutt today. “I’ve still not calmed down.”

Torquay play in the National League South these days – they dropped out of the Football League 10 years ago – but that’s still two levels above Cleeve and their side included former Premier League player Dean Moxey. They also attract 3,000-plus fans to their home games.

“It couldn’t have gone any better,” said Collicutt. “If you’d have asked me to write a script before the game about how I’d want it to go, I couldn’t have bettered it.”

And while captain Langworthy will take a lot of the plaudits, it truly was a team effort.

“I was taken aback by the way we played and performed,” admitted Collicutt. “It’s not often that all 11 players give 8, 9 or 10 out of 10 performances but that is what they did, we absolutely worked our socks off.

“The supporters liked the way we played and enjoyed the football that we played.

“Torquay had quite a bit of the ball in the first five or 10 minutes but our first goal seemed to deflate them.

“We had another couple of chances but to go in 1-0 at half-time, we were really chuffed.

“I told the players at half-time that they were 45 minutes from making history and the lads went out and gave a real top performance in the second half, if anything it was better that the first half.

“Then we scored a good second goal and I was thinking, ‘Do I make any changes?’.

“I made two or three and then blow me down, we scored another!

“Torquay are a quality side and their budget is a helluva lot bigger than ours but my lads not only matched them, they were better than them.”

The 65-year-old, who twice won promotion to the top tier of non-league football as a player – the second time as captain of Cheltenham Town – said the win over Torquay was the best day of his managerial career.

“I want to say a big, big thank you to the hundreds of people from the village who came to support us, it was a real good day,” he said.

“The turnout was substantial, they came out in their numbers."

Langworthy, meanwhile, simply said “absolutely” when asked if it was the best day of his footballing career.

He’d scored just twice this season before Saturday and had told The Local Answer in the build-up to the game: “Maybe I’ve been saving one for the Cup!”  

Langworthy is set to be in action again on Saturday when Cleeve travel to Melksham Town for an FA Trophy tie, a tie that Collicutt obviously wants to win.

“We’ve got to maintain the levels we showed on Saturday,” he said. “I don’t think the players have ever played to that level before but they’ve shown what they can do.”

Meanwhile, Chesham, like Torquay, play in National League South. They are currently ninth, four places and three points below Torquay.