Sorry to hear about the Alfred - I was there a few years ago and the beer was pretty good, and the atmosphere too. What a shame, indeed.
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If you'd written that five or six years ago I'd have said you were bonkers. I went to Tamworth a few times when the Hatters were in non-league and the football was always better than the beer. Most of my Luton mates preferred the Robert Peel to the Globe, though I disagreed (they were swayed by the niche beer offering from small independents, whereas I liked the quality of the more mainstream beers). On the last occasion of the Hatters gracing the Lamb Ground, a few of us went to Lichfield instead, that's how bad it was. Since we got back in the football league I've only been to Tamworth to change trains, and only found the Kings Ditch open on one such occasion, when the atmosphere was poor and the service consisted mostly of a young man looking at his smart phone. And I've not been there during the Tamworth Tap's existence, so it looks like you've struck lucky.
There is a half-hourly shuttle service between City and Trent Valley stations. The timetable as it stands has a seven minute wait at TV for the train to Tamworth, but that's only hourly, so if you miss the shuttle at 03 there's no point getting the 33, you might as well stay in the pub.
When I did it in 2013 I got a train to Lichfield City, then after eight pubs we caught a bus from outside the Duke of York (well, 4 mins walk away) to Trent Valley station (a 5 min walk from the bus stop to the platform) for a train to Tamworth. (Or the walk from the Duke of York is just under a mile, though not particularly pleasant.) I bought a Plus Bus ticket with my train fare, but it turned out not to be valid on the X12 bus! So I had to pay £1.60 for the fairly short journey to the station.
There are buses from Lichfield to Tamworth - the local 765 which takes over half an hour, and the X65 which takes 20 minutes.
(I don't think doing Tamworth first and then Lichfield would work as Tamworth has better train connections for getting home.)
***This thread could do with splitting off into the Pub Crawls sub-forum (from #44).***
There are 22 pubs listed on Pubs Galore in Tamworth Central. I've crossed through half of those (hotel, sports bar, NRA, etc) and five of the remainder are chain pubs (Marstons, Stonegate, Craft Union, Hogarths and Spoons), which leaves a possible five or six - or as someone said in one of the reviews (was it you?), a small handful: Crafty Two, Globe, Kings Ditch, Market Vaults, Sir Robert Peel, Tamworth Tap.
I've had a quick look at Lichfield and identified a possible dozen or more - admittedly a few of those are Marstons pubs, but pretty decent none the less.
I think combining the two would get us at least 10 pubs on a "to do" list and a similar number of wild cards.