Charlie Oatway is not the type of player to shirk a challenge.

But Albion's combative midfielder will be even more fired up than usual for Saturday's visit by Torquay.

It is not just because the Seagulls badly need a result. Torquay are also one of Oatway's former clubs.

He made around 70 appearances for the west country club between December 1995 and August 1997 and fans at Plainmoor voted him player of the season.

Torquay form part of a trilogy for Oatway of League battles against old employers.

He is hoping for a better result than at Lincoln last Saturday, where he had a loan spell two seasons ago.

Then on Saturday week Oatway returns to Cardiff, his first professional club.

Facing former team mates gets the adrenalin flowing. "It puts even more fire in your stomach," Oatway said. "I never left any of those clubs on bad terms, so it's not as if I have got to prove anything, but I just want to win.

"It's still only three points, but we need them. That is the way I approach every game."

Oatway loves playing. A groin injury sustained in the Worthington Cup defeat by Millwall threatened to rule him out at Lincoln, but he recovered.

Oatway felt the injury late in the first half of the Millwall match. He said nothing to manager Micky Adams or physio Malcolm Stuart and was only taken off in the closing stages when they spotted him limping.

Adams summed up Oatway's approach. "Charlie is always desperate to play," he said. "You never rule him out."

That kind of commitment explains why Oatway has been vying for the captaincy so far this season with his midfield partner Paul Rogers.

He has been the skipper when Rogers has failed to make the starting line-up.

"I enjoy every game that I go out there and lead the boys out," Oatway said. "It could have been any one of a number of people, but I'm chuffed to bits.

"I've been captain once at Brentford and at Torquay I was captain a couple of times.

"I give Dodge (Rogers) stick about it and he gives me some back. It's not as if he is laying down and dying.

"He wants to be in the side and he will keep working hard like he always does, because he's such an honest pro."

Oatway is something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. On the pitch his enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of him.

The 26-year-old was sent off last season for biting the face of Darlington's Brian Atkinson.

Could this be the same doting dad of three young children constantly campaigning for charity?

Oatway has already raised thousands of pounds for the Camelia Botnar Centre at Goring-By-Sea for children with special needs like his little daughter Sophia, who has a mild form of cystic fibrosis.

"On the pitch that is my job, my living," Oatway said. "I've got to feed my wife and kids, so I have to do that to the best of my ability. If that means going around throwing myself into tackles then so be it. That's no skin off my nose.

"But I'm also in a position where I can raise a few quid for certain causes. I do it because I enjoy it, not because I have to, but there are certainly two sides to me."

The side Adams wants to see at Withdean on Saturday is the tigerish midfielder leading Albion to a much-needed victory.