David Cameron Walker

Archive for the ‘Torquay United’ Category

“There’s a long, long, long way to go”

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

It would be easy for me to come out and gloat with this blog entry. To a certain extent, it’s unavoidable – our form has been tremendous. Ever since our lowest point of the season so far, heavy back-to-back defeats against Gillingham and Southend, we have played 12 league games, of which we have lost only 1 and won 9, including the two victories over Plymouth. We have now reached the dizzying heights of 6th, where we finished last year. And we’re well ahead of where we were last year too. The sky seems to be the limit.

The one hiccup was the defeat at Accrington, but there is little shame in that as they are a side in form and notoriously difficult to beat. The more disappointing upshot of that match was Rene Howe’s sending off, which resulted in a 4-match ban. But Taiwo Atieno, who was drafted in as his replacement, has done an excellent job, keeping Howe out of the side for the game after his suspension ended at Morecambe. The most surprising statistic of the season, given Howe’s good form earlier in the year, is that we are unbeaten with the big striker not in the side, so he will have to work hard to get back into the starting XI.

We now have a settled team. Brian Saah’s injury has allowed the partnership between Chris Robertson and Mark Ellis to flourish. Having three very good centre-backs for this level has been a rarity for us over the years as the smaller squads and playing budgets usually mean our back-ups aren’t quite up to the same standard as our main pairing. Ian Morris has also battled his way into the side after injury and is improving with every game, grabbing his first goal for the club against Macclesfield. Danny Stevens has been excellent on the other wing, our formation and style of play suiting him perfectly, Joe Oastler has adapted very well to the right-back role, Kevin Nicholson has created and scored in equal measure, and Lee Mansell and Damon Lathrope have been working exceptionally hard in the centre of midfield.

But the key men for us have been playmaker Eunan O’Kane and goalkeeper Bobby Olejnik, who are clearly capable of playing at a much higher level. And that remains the main obstacle to the possibility of success this season. There has reportedly been interest in O’Kane from higher clubs, including West Ham United according to one national newspaper, but Martin Ling has stated that there have been no bids for him or any of our other players.

Keeping O’Kane is imperative to any promotion aspirations we may have. Although this season was supposed to be only a transition year, our form and position is not a fluke – we have played well since the first match. We are in a promotion battle now, so we should make a decent effort to get promoted, though if we don’t, it wouldn’t be a big disappointment, as expectations have been relatively low all season. To maintain this push, we will need luck with injuries (preferably a lack of) and suspensions, but also to keep our squad together, and Eunan is the most important of them all. Most of our play goes through him – in the game he missed through suspension at Port Vale, we carried much less of a threat going forward, and were lucky to come away from a cold evening in the Potteries with a point.

Olejnik, too, is vital – a fantastic shot-stopper, he is already one of the best goalkeepers I can remember playing for the club, and that is a list that includes Neville Southall, Andy Marriott and, err, Matt Gregg…

Promotion is now a realistic proposition. If we get the luck we had last year, and don’t sell anyone, we have a team capable of a play-off place at least. The other factor is the form of the teams around us, and I don’t believe there are any teams around us I particularly fear, apart from Crawley who, although not looking as menacing as they once did, will surely now cruise to the title. We have been one of the most consistent teams in the top half lately, and that includes good results with teams that are up there, such as the win over Swindon on Boxing Day (silencing di Canio in the process, which must be a rarity), and a tight draw with Oxford.

It’s another close year at the top of League Two, and whoever goes up automatically and gets into the play-offs will be a case of who slips up the least often and, unlike some of the other teams in and around the top 7, we had experience of this last year, and got all the way to Old Trafford too. But as the boss said after our win at Morecambe, “There’s a long, long, long way to go” – with an extra long to emphasise that.

Finally, while all this was going on, Paul Buckle was sacked by Bristol Rovers, and it is only appropriate for me to pass comment on that. Amidst all the schadenfreude, it’s hard to not feel at least a little bit sorry for him. In the grand scheme of things, it is a harsh decision to be sacked so early into a tenure regardless of form, especially considering how much money the board gave him in the summer to build his own team. But the other side of that is the fact that the team he built consistently failed to perform. And, ultimately, there will be little sympathy from us because he left us for a “bigger club”, one that by the time he left was in a relegation scrap, as opposed to his former club which is pushing for promotion. Shame…

Written by James Bennett, We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @jbennettf1

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39 long, galling years of waiting

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Contrary to the many chants you may hear at St James Park, Home Park or Plainmoor, there are 3 teams in Devon (in the Football League, anyway), and it’s fair to say the yellow corner of the county is the smallest. Our fiercest rivalry is with Exeter, as they are the “middle” team in the county and we’ve been in the same division as them for more seasons than Plymouth. In the same sense, Plymouth also consider Exeter to be their biggest rival for the same reason, even though they are closer to Torquay. Plymouth vs Torquay is probably third in the hierarchy of Devon derbies.

The competitive encounters we’ve had with Argyle have been fleeting, and, to put it simply, our record hasn’t been great. Excluding our win in January 2000 in the Football League Trophy (and while we’d love that to be relevant in any way possible, it’s about as relevant as our wins over them in the Devon Bowl or testimonials), the last time we’d beaten them in a competitive match was on April 1st 1972, a 2-1 win at Plainmoor, which was only our 5th victory over them in the Football League. Our league record since then? 5 draws and 5 defeats (including a humiliating 4-0 loss at home in 2000, which has scarred me for life). Poor form.

This year is the first time in a decade that we have both been in the same division. It’s been a galling 10 years too – first they were promoted out of what was then Division 3 in 2001/02, and then they were promoted again in 2003/04, which overshadowed our own promotion into what became League One. After that, we were relegated 2 times in 3 years and spent 2 years out of the Football League as they pushed for the Premier League.

But in the last 3 years, not only have we got ourselves back up to the fourth tier again, but their world has come crashing down, along with their league position. Now I don’t mean to wish ill on them, but it is good for us, in that we actually have local rivals to play for once, as opposed to our nearest rivals being Wycombe or someone equally far away. The South West can be a cold, lonely place sometimes.

Their collapse also gave us the best opportunity we would ever have to end our 39 years of mild frustration. Given that we had also dispatched Bristol Rovers and Mr Buckle earlier in the year, and Argyle’s terrible run of form contrasting our recent resurgence, we felt that we should win – that we had to win, really. It was also important for Martin Ling that we win – our poor run of a month ago, as I’ve discussed previously, had brought in the vultures, and while they had been silenced by a run of 4 straight wins that took us clear of the danger zone, tripping up against a poor side who also just happened to be one of our biggest rivals would no doubt bring them and their miserable negative nonsense back again. It didn’t help matters when Ling decided to tempt fate by revealing he didn’t think he’d ever won 5 games in a row as a manager…

However, thankfully everything went to plan. Although Argyle’s mixture of experienced heads and youngsters successfully stifled our passing game in the first half with an aggressive high pressing style, in the second half it all fell into place, largely thanks to a couple of moments of magic from Eunan O’Kane. The young Irishman, our highly-rated number 10, smashed in the first from just outside the area not long after the half-time break, and then a few moments later added a second with one of the best goals I have ever seen live – a wonderful 35-yard lob over a stranded Romain Larrieu’s head.

Plymouth heads dropped and it looked like it could become rather uncomfortable for our Cornis…I mean West Devonian friends. Several good chances later, Danny Stevens, a man reborn in recent weeks after slotting in to Ling’s 4-3-3 system very effectively, ran straight through the Argyle defence to add a third. Suddenly it looked as if we would avenge the many thrashings they had given us down the years, but after a late consolation from Will Atkinson, they managed to regain enough energy in the last 10 minutes to at least keep us awake until the final whistle.

But even so, a glorious win – our first competitive win over Plymouth for 10 years, a first league win over them for 39 years, and our biggest ever win over them. Added to the win over Buckle and Bristol Rovers at the start of the year, this win, and this run of form, is firmly cementing Ling’s place in the affections of the fans, not least because we are doing it the Torquay way – playing very attractive, passing, fluid football.

The next big target? Well, another cup upset at Bramall Lane next weekend would be nice, but realistically, it’s to get our first win at Home Park for 40 years on January 2nd. After that, we can start to think about a play-off push again. And I don’t see any reason why we can’t achieve either of those things. After the misery and negativity surrounding the club in October, positivity reigns supreme again.

Written by James Bennett, We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @jbennettf1

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The case against football fans’ forums

Friday, October 21st, 2011

OK, I’ll be honest with you – I’ve not been to see us play in ages. I’m in exile in the Midlands, trying to further my academic and radio broadcasting careers, which are more important and more fun respectively. Which raises an interesting point – how important are our football clubs really?

I’ve been keeping up with events at Plainmoor by (amongst other methods) reading one of the unofficial Torquay United online fans’ forums, as a lot of us exiles do when we can’t get to games. And I can’t help but noticing that there’s something odd about the whole thing. We’re on a bit of a bad run on the pitch – last weekend’s 5-2 defeat to Gillingham increased our winless run to 7 games. But for some reason, this has now got people hysterical. A minority are calling for Martin Ling’s head, saying it’s not good enough. A larger group are at the next notch down on the hysteria scale – ‘quite disgruntled’ – and if this run continues, it’ll only be a matter of time before they take the step to actively calling for Ling to go.

This all seems rather unusual to me because it’s October. The season started just over 2 months ago. Not only that but while we are on a winless run, we’re still 16th, 5 points clear of the relegation zone and genuine danger. And some of those matches in our winless run were good results, including draws against in-form Rotherham, Morecambe and Cheltenham. We only lost 3 of those 7 games. I can understand the odd complaint, but why the absurd reaction, and why so soon?

High expectation is definitely a factor. I, like many, initially went into the pre-season friendlies pessimistic, but we did get some decent results, and our early season performances were very good, especially the very satisfying win over Bristol Rovers. It did inevitably raise expectations, but since our bad run started, I’ve readjusted them back to where they were beforehand, so no great shock to the system. The problem is there is a core of Torquay fans who believe we should be fighting for promotion, especially after reaching the play-off final this year. Taken back to its roots, this ultimately goes back to a great period in our history when we were consistently one of the top performers in the old 3rd Division South. But clearly there’s an element of common sense missing in the minds of fans who believe this – we’re a small club for the league, arguably one that in terms of average attendance barely deserves to be a Football League club at all; we’ve punched above our weight quite often in recent decades; we lost our very talented young manager and some key players over the summer; and we don’t have a huge amount of money to go spending on extravagant new signings like Crawley, Bristol Rovers, Swindon, Bradford and even the likes of Shrewsbury, Northampton and Rotherham. Perspective, people, please…

But beyond that, I think there’s a more fundamental reason why I’m seeing this reactionary nonsense – it’s because of the very nature of forums themselves. They tend to be populated by numerous exiles, most of whom don’t go to the games – they only listen on the radio, read the match reports and stats, read other fans’ views (which of course includes their personal agendas and outlooks), or even just look at the results from afar. They then make rash groundless judgements, and share them with other people, most of whom have also not gone to the games and only follow via the media and forums. There also tends to be a crowd of doom-mongers who conveniently appear every time there’s a vaguely negative atmosphere around the club in order to tell everyone that they were right all along, whipping things up into even more of a frenzy. The result is that you’ve quickly got a significant number of people who are at the very least quite unhappy at the way things are going, despite not knowing what actually is going on, and unable to critically analyse what they are saying and doing, and it continues to snowball from there.

Hysteria spreads rapidly even if there is no substance to what was there to begin with. It’s how rumours start and it’s how campaigns against certain individuals start. Of course I’m not saying that this never happened before Tim Berners-Lee realised he was onto something that could catch on. But in the age of instant communication, where everyone has a platform to say whatever they want even if it’s complete tripe, and where everyone is an expert on something and can lie their way into credibility, it is far easier for vendettas and agendas to spark a wildfire of rage which undermines the club and those connected with it, and the fires take hold much faster than they ever did in the pre-internet age.

My opinion is that the situation at Plainmoor is nowhere near as bad as has been made out by certain quarters. That’s not to say I’m not concerned – any long run without a win is never good. We’ve conceded a lot goals in recent games, and the problem is our second choice defenders are hardly worthy of replacing our current back 4 after letting in 9 in a reserve game against Cheltenham recently (though Ling will be giving Mark Ellis a game this weekend). Also worryingly our strikers have gone off the boil recently – it does seem that after an excellent start, Rene Howe isn’t having the same effect as he did early on – and in midfield, we like bite, and Eunan O’Kane hasn’t been the same creative force he was last year. Beyond that, I can’t really judge as I’ve not seen us play for 90 minutes for over a month – I’ll be honest enough to admit that, unlike some, but then my agenda is to be a positive force for the club, not a prophet of doom. You’re not going to encourage more support by spreading misery throughout the internet.

But bringing it back around in a nice, convenient loop to the point I made at the start of this, what is it that people are getting so hysterical about? Torquay United AFC is exactly what it says on the tin – a football club. Perhaps I’ll be branded as not a “true” Scotsman…I mean fan* for saying this, but what’s the big deal? If one of the prophets of doom – let’s call him Jeremiah, for argument’s sake (although usually he’d be under a pseudonym like TrueYellow1658 or TwatGull72) – was going on about how it was terrible that we hadn’t won in 3 matches and that we were on a downward spiral that could only lead to relegation (which is an obvious set-up for him to come back at the end of the season if we do go down and say “I told you we’d go down”), my response would be “…yeah…so?”

If we do go down, the worst thing for me would be that I wouldn’t be able to contribute to this here great project again (apologies for the blatant sycophancy there, but it is true). The Conference is a great league, packed with big professional clubs and some very talented players. I know that because we’ve been there, done that, and got the celebratory Wembley play-off final t-shirt. It was a great moment to be promoted back into the Football League, but ultimately, what did it mean? It has proved to be little more than a status thing. We had more TV and media coverage in the Conference because it was non-league and League Two isn’t, and non-league is a speciality with a significant core of followers. Nor was this coverage on at 1 am on a Sunday morning. We were also a big club in the Conference and both the seasons we had there were great fun – we played some great little clubs in the league and the cups, and we were very successful. We even had bigger attendances than when we were doing well in League Two last year – credit crunch or not, that still says something, especially as Conference away support tends to be much lower than League Two.

No doubt Jeremiah would get quite uppity about this, because he believes that because we’ve been in the Football League since 1928, we have a divine right to be there forever, and a divine right to be one of the top sides in League Two as well. But try telling that to fans of Luton, Stockport, Lincoln, Cambridge, Mansfield, York, Wrexham, Darlington, Grimsby…and they’re all bigger clubs than us, with more success on their Wikipedia pages. Yes, there are smaller clubs than us in the Football League, but I’d say there are more bigger clubs in the Conference – thinking about it that way, there may be only one way this will end up in the not-too-distant future.

So, in that case, why worry? Why worry about falling out of one football league into another, particularly if it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later? It’s the same sport, just different teams. The supposed “gap” between the Football League and the Conference is a mental construct defined in name only. Remove that, and these days, there is very little in it, as has been demonstrated by Carlisle, Doncaster, Stevenage, Crawley and others. The Conference is, to all intents and purposes, the 5th division of the Football League, although it will never officially be recognised as such because of the inherent benefits of being a non-league league. And I don’t believe we’d be in any significant financial danger if it happened, as I don’t believe we’re in anywhere near as bad a shape as Chester and Halifax were when they were relegated for a second time, or Plymouth Argyle are now, or even when we went down in 2007.

Lower league club fans have fostered this idea of non-league being a massive dark endless cave guarded by a scary monster with nasty big pointy teeth that you don’t want to go anywhere near. Well, we’ve fought this monster: its bark was worse than its bite and we slit its throat. The disappointing thing is that after only 2 years back in the FL, some of our fans, in the great footballing tradition of historical revisionism, have already forgotten this. But they are false prophets that Harold Camping would be proud of – even if we go down, relegation is not the end of the road. And, above all else, it is still only football – some people take Shankly, his famous quote, and football as a whole far too seriously…

In any case, our winless run started after my last blog entry with our trip to Northampton. So naturally I’m assuming another entry will bring a change of luck again. Although saying that, we are playing Southend this weekend…

* = P.S. Obscure joke explanation can be found here

Written by James Bennett, We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @jbennettf1

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Whinge when we’re winning…

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Save the moment for posterity, Gulls fans – 4th in the table. Not only that but a comfortable win against Northampton on Saturday combined with Crawley Town beating Morecambe or vice versa would almost certainly put us into the top 3. Who’d have bet on that at the start of the season?

And yet before last week’s dumping of Macclesfield, the mood around the club was a complete contrast. On the fan sites there were already people harking back to the “good old days” of Paul Buckle – yes, after just 5 matches, 2 of which were wins and 2 were draws. It’s absolutely staggering how fans can lurch between extreme opinions, let alone when the results don’t even warrant it. All that had happened was a defeat at home to Crawley, who looked like a quality side and fully deserved their win, and a draw at Dagenham, which is a difficult place to go to – last time we played there we lost 5-3. There were complaints that a season of mid-table mediocrity for the sake of stability (even though our form up until that point had suggested we were doing better than that anyway) was too “low key” and unambitious – this from the fan base of a club that last season only just scraped into the play-offs and had since lost its manager and key players, and is traditionally on the cusp of falling out of the 92 best-supported clubs in England. Lacking perspective a bit?

It’s also worth pointing out that before last weekend’s game, we were level on points with Bristol Rovers, and we are now 3 points above them – that is, Bristol Rovers, the side that Paul Buckle left us for, that he has had free reign to create a League Two super-squad for the sole purpose of getting promoted, and that we beat 2-1 in Bristol. And some Torquay fans want him back?

No, I’m quite satisfied with Martin Ling, thanks – he is doing a fantastic job here. OK, so we’ve had a succession of slow starts in matches, and don’t usually pick our game up until the second half. And the football we have played has like the fans, lurched from one extreme to another – we were poor against Crawley, in the first half at Dagenham, and even at Aldershot where we won 1-0, but we have also played some beautiful passing football, particularly in the second half last weekend, when we took an in-form Macclesfield apart. Ultimately, the results are there to see – 1 defeat in 6 league matches, 11 points on the board, and 4th in the table behind only Crawley, Morecambe and Rotherham – and I expect at least 2 of those to be towards the top come the end of the season.

On the player front, we have seen some interesting developments. Our Northern Ireland U21 international striker Billy Kee has left after a year at the club, the former Leicester man departing for Burton due to “home sickness”. Many have mourned his departure but personally I could never see the potential so many were shouting about. I always saw him as a bit one dimensional – I don’t remember him ever demonstrating any noteworthy skilfulness, and big bumbling centre forwards are slowly becoming a thing of the past. As his replacement, we have signed Billy Bodin on loan from Swindon – the winger-cum-striker certainly livened up proceedings when he was introduced at Dagenham, but was missing for the Macclesfield game as he was on international duty with the Wales U21s.

We were also without the injured Rene Howe, for me our star performer this season. But Chris McPhee stepped into the breach up front and did an admirable job, scoring a fortuitous but deserved goal. He was then substituted by Mark Ellis, usually a centre-back but in his younger days a centre-forward, and in a rather surreal moment at the very end of the game, he made enough of a nuisance of himself to create the 3rd goal for Eunan O’Kane. After Stevenage’s success using Darius Charles as an auxiliary striker at the end of last season, perhaps this is the start of something…

So onwards to Sixfields, and a match which will see us up against 2 notable former players. Jake Robinson played for us last year while on loan from Shrewsbury, but should avoid the boos. A man who will not, however, is Bayo Akinfenwa. The big striker starred for us in League One 7 seasons ago, resurrecting his flagging career, but after we were relegated, he refused a new contract and decided to follow the money to Swansea, thus making himself a very unpopular figure with the Torquay fans who worshipped him just a few weeks previously. Hopefully Brian Saah and Chris Robertson will keep him quiet.

This may be branded as a transition year, but if we keep playing the way we have, and keep picking up points to the ratio we have so far, we will be up there at the end of the season. But in League Two, consistency is the key…

Written by James Bennett, We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @jbennettf1

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Revenge is a dish best served after two matches

Monday, August 15th, 2011


Before our trip to north Bristol, I expected that soon I’d have to write a report about our great comeback against Burton Albion on the opening day and battling performance in the League Cup against Southampton midweek, before Paul Buckle and his newly-assembled team of League Two stars taught us a lesson in lower league football. The thought barely entered my mind that, for the first time since this, we could actually win at the Mem…

It wasn’t so much the victory as the manner of it that made this, for me, our most satisfying victory since promotion from the Conference. We didn’t perform that much better than against Burton, and indeed when we took the lead it was against the run of play. But after our two goals, the first from Taiwo Atieno and the second a penalty converted by Rene Howe after Atieno was brought down by Rovers ‘keeper Scott Bevan, we looked comfortable and could have knocked in another 2 or 3 in the second half. Rovers could have as well, but they didn’t take their chances either.

No, what was most satisfying was the fact that it all went horribly wrong for Buckle.

Now I have nothing against Bucks on a personal level, unlike some – a number of inebriated Torquay fans stood in front of me and hurled unrepeatable abuse at him for the 90 minutes, which I found quite grating. But having said that, there is an element of hubris about his defection and large raid on the whole of League Two, not just us, so to see him ranting at the referee who consistently seemed to give decisions against Rovers, and gesturing to his players furiously inside his technical area, while Torquay fans chanted “you’re getting sacked in the morning” in the direction of the home dugout, was rather hilarious. Making a tit of himself on the Football League Show was the icing on the cake. Pride comes before the fall and all that.

Plus what was also quite satisfying was the poor performances on the pitch from some of our former players, namely Bevan, who conceded the penalty and flapped at several crosses; Mustapha Carayol, who was booked; Craig Stanley, who was also booked and didn’t look like half the player he was when he was with us; and Chris Zebroski, who didn’t even start the game and, when he did enter the fray, missed a chance at the death to equalise.

Meanwhile, on our side, Lee Mansell had another captain’s game in midfield. Buckle had largely played him at right-back last year but Martin Ling has moved him into the midfield, and he has had three excellent games there, including scoring two goals. Our new strike partnership of Atieno and Howe (who has looked particularly good despite claiming to be only 80% fit) seems absolutely lethal – two big guys who are great with their feet. Brian Saah and Ian Morris also improved over their Burton performances.

But what impresses me most about how we have been playing is the style. Against Burton, we were very fluid, keeping the ball on the floor and passing with confidence, with through balls from Eunan O’Kane opening up the Brewers defence. There seemed to be a Total Football dimension to the play, a reminder than Ling and assistant manager Shaun Taylor were part of the great Swindon team of the early 1990s that played some very attractive football under Glenn Hoddle en route to the Premier League. Sometimes the formation was 4-4-2. Sometimes it was 4-4-1-1, with Howe tracking back to defend. Sometimes it was 4-3-3 with Morris pushing forward on the left. Joe Oastler pushed forward from right back to occasionally make it a 3-5-2, with Danny Stevens cutting inside and running at Burton defenders.

From both games that I’ve seen, I can honestly say that this Torquay side is, at the moment, the most dangerous going forward that I can remember, even including the days when Rodney Jack was paired with Jason Roberts, or the all-Scottish partnership of David Graham and Martin Gritton that got us promoted to League One in 2003-04.

However, it is worth acknowledging that Burton were tough opponents, and may well prove to be awkward to beat this year for the top sides in the division. The signings of big forwards Justin Richards and Calvin Zola seem to have improved them in attack, and Paul Peschisolido played to their strengths with a very direct approach. The long balls over the top into the area in between the defensive and midfield lines caused problems, especially with the muscular presence of the big strikers.

This is what led to both their goals in 5 minutes of madness early in the second half. And that is symptomatic of a wider issue in the team at the moment – we don’t quite seem to be as solid defensively as we were last year. As well as two quick goals in the first game, we also left holes against Southampton and you don’t do that against such a clinical, talented side – hence why the scoreline was deceptively large and wasn’t a reflection on the fact that for a large part of the game we battered the side that tore Leeds apart just 3 days before.

With Bristol Rovers, though, we were a bit more solid, although it is fair to say that Rovers did have a number of good chances that they didn’t take. If there are any Pirates reading this that didn’t go on Saturday, I can reassure you that it was by no means a disastrous performance and that you should expect good (though maybe not great) things this year, although Buckle’s insistence to Mark Clemmit of the BBC that his players were “excellent” despite the defeat is a bit daft – trust me, we’re used to his excruciatingly positive interviews after defeats, and they don’t get any easier to swallow.

This week before the Rovers game I read FourFourTwo’s season preview, in which they placed us 17th in their predictions for League Two, only just above penniless Argyle. I was a bit annoyed by that – we might have lost our manager and a couple of key players, but we have an equally good, if not better manager and some equally good, if not better new faces. At least by beating Rovers, we have gone some way to proving that my pre-season optimism was more than just the usual delusional positivity – we might be in transition but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to be at the sharp end of the table come May. Discount us at your peril, football magazines…

Written by James Bennett, We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @jbennettf1

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Back To The Future?

Thursday, July 28th, 2011


Torquay United’s promotion campaign came to an end in the play-off final with a disappointing performance and 1-0 defeat, after which the manager departed for a bigger club and took some of the club’s best players with him – but I’m not necessarily talking about last season. I could also be talking about my very first season as a Gulls fan, 1997-98.

I began attending matches as a 6 year old in November 1997, visiting Ninian Park to see us draw 1-1 with Cardiff, followed a month later by my first home game against Watford in the FA Cup. I quickly realised I was on to a good thing as it took until we played Rotherham at home just before the end of the season for me to see Torquay lose for the first time.

In hindsight, it was a great season for the club, and we were unlucky to miss out on automatic promotion. Kevin Hodges had built a very good squad on a minuscule budget (as ever at Plainmoor) that combined all-round quality with strength in depth. That he played with a 5-3-2/3-5-2 formation, with Andy Gurney and Paul Gibbs as wing-backs, seems unusual now but at the time it worked brilliantly. Up front, St Vincent’s finest Rodney Jack, became my childhood hero by scoring bags of goals.

Our form dipped at the end of the year, dropping us out of the automatic promotion places. We made it to Wembley but lost 1-0 to Colchester thanks to a rather soft penalty. After that, it all fell apart rapidly. As had been expected, Hodges left for relegated Plymouth, and he was followed there by Gibbs and Steve McCall, two important pieces of the puzzle. Wes Saunders was controversially appointed as his replacement, despite his inexperience in management. Adding to the problems, one of his first actions was arranging the sale of Jack to Crewe for £650,000.

So it was a depleted side that headed into the 1998-99 season, and it was no surprise that, after more departures in the months to come, we would finish 20th, narrowly avoiding relegation to the Conference just a year after nearly being automatically promoted to Division Two.

Fast-forward to the off-season we are in right now, and the situation is eerily similar. We narrowly lost to Stevenage in the play-off final at Old Trafford, and within a matter of days, manager Paul Buckle and assistant Shaun North were heading up the M5 to relegated Bristol Rovers, taking goalkeeper Scott Bevan, star striker Chris Zebroski, and loanee from Morecambe Craig Stanley with them. Their current signings total stands at 15, including some very good players for this level – it’s hard not to look on in envy.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of Torquay fans are less than happy at the situation, assuming that he must have tapped our players up before the end of the season and seeing it as an unfair raid on the club. But as far as I’m concerned, it is a free market, and it isn’t unusual that managers take players with them to their next club. It’s not good that our talented squad has been dismantled slightly, but it is worth remembering that the two players he has signed directly from Torquay were expected to leave anyway, and Stanley wasn’t even our player. There is also one key player he didn’t get – defender Guy Branston, who was given an offer he couldn’t refuse by Bradford.

So it will be a new look Torquay side that heads into the 2011-12 side. But despite the similarities, I don’t believe we are in anywhere near as bad a position as in 1998-99. For one, we have a more experienced manager in former Leyton Orient and Cambridge boss Martin Ling, who is very much a fan of good passing football, something that is always traditionally appreciated by Gulls fans. He has brought in former Swindon defender Shaun Taylor as his assistant, and also has already made a few signings, including former Orient defender Brian Saah, former Falkirk ‘keeper Robert Olejnik, powerful striker Rene Howe, and left winger Ian Morris from Scunthorpe.

But the most intriguing signing for me is Chris McPhee from Kidderminster. The utility man previously played for us in 2006-07, the season in which we were relegated to the Conference, and he became a figure of fun (to put it kindly) after a number of poor performances. But he has since made a name for himself in the Conference at Ebbsfleet (he scored their winner in the FA Trophy Final against us a year after we released him!) and the Harriers, for whom he scored 17 goals last year.

Ling clearly has an idea of the shape he wants his team to be, which has arguably been lacking in recent seasons with players often playing out of position, so it looks like a balanced first XI. Added to this, while we have lost a couple of key players, most of the play-off final side remains, as well as some promising young players emerging from our academy.

The consensus amongst fans that we can’t repeat last year’s feats – most would be happy with a season of mid-table mediocrity, as unlikely as that may be in such a close and competitive league. But we’ve punched above our weight many times before, such as last year.

Despite my initial reservations, I am cautiously optimistic for our chances this season – on paper, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about, although we do have a habit of doing things the hard way…

Written by James Bennet We Are Going Up’s Torquay United Blogger

James tweets at @Jbennetf1

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