Full time/Part time

[Brewers boy]

Firstly, I don't know how much a player earns at this level, but I suspect that it's not great.
Week in week out we play part time teams with better players than us. Is it because financially not worthwhile to play full time? Any decent tradesman should be able to earn £1000/£1200 or more a week. And you can probably double that in London. Can our wage structure match that, I think not. Obviously if your only bright enough to stack shelves at a supermarket then full time footie is a no brainer.

There must surely be a large enough pool of talent whithin a couple of hours of Torbay to create a team capable of winning this league.

Compared to the rest of the league we have a much larger fanbase and pay considerably more to get in, so it's pretty obvious that we must have more cash than the others, possibly excepting Yeovil, to splash out.

Just because a player is part time there is no reason to pay them any less than a full time player, after all we're paying for talent and whether they train full time or part time matters not.

2009 Burton Albion won the National league (or Nationwide Conference as it was then ) as a part time club and still had some part time players in league 2.

The question is........... Did we make a mistake staying full time or should we have gone part time or a mixture of full/part time?

[Skillsy]

Very interesting post.......

If we were part time paying roughly half of what we do now, many players would be better off having another job. As you say it depends what the other job is.......if a player was an accountant, for example, in real life he would be worse off playing full time. Also, if a player was on a career path outside of football it would be interrupted by being full time and would slow down future progress, work promotions etc.

I disagree that it doesn't matter whether a player trains full time or not. A full time player has more time to become fitter, more time to rest, and more time to rehabilitate after injury. If two players are of a similar ability, the full time player would likely produce better performances than the part timer.
When Burton won the league in 2009 there were far fewer full time teams, I think it would be much more difficult now.
I also think it would be very difficult to have a mix of full and part time players in a squad. For example when we are practicing defending corners (assuming we do!) in training on a Friday morning it would be very difficult if half the players were absent.

[culmstockgull]

I think you may find that players even at our level are on a lot more than we may think, Its logical to assume that say dawson who was part time at gloucester with a side cab job would likely be on close to a thousand a week or more full time with us, he drives a merc so probably a PCP costing 400 a month, mortgage if he is lucky 800 a month, wife and kids to provide for, bills to pay plus at least one holiday a year and everyday living expenses. According to several sites the average salary is between 1000 and 1500 but I imagine with our geography we may have to pay more. I imagine moxey and hall are on similar wages with halstead and donnellan not far behind, as for the part time versus full time, well we have a part time manager unless he considers sitting in front of his tele watching highlights employment, plus a head of recruitment that may or may not put in a day a week.. As for fitness levels I have only seen one team this season that you could tell was part time so at our level it does not count for that much , that is supported by the amount of part time teams who have beaten us this season.

[exilegull]

There must surely be a large enough pool of talent whithin a couple of hours of Torbay to create a team capable of winning this league.

I really, really doubt that. I think you vastly overestimate the number of players who would have the quality to go full-time but stay part-time because they have a well paid professional career and throw in the restriction of being within a couple of hours of Torquay, I'd imagine it is minimal. Even part-time players still need to dedicate substantial time to staying fit, there is still regular travel on weekends and training a couple of times a week.

[dagglebert]

I think this was one of the reasons we walked this league last time we were in it. I may be wrong but I think we were the only full time team then, and the extra fitness clearly made a difference. This time there are more full time teams. Its not a guarentee of success, as we have seen this season - you also need good players.

[torq2u]

Yes, an interesting post, Brewer's Boy (I'm sure I backed you in the National in 2006) .

Fitness is something we do not seem to excel in this time round in the NLS, as we hobble through the season. Whereas, opposing teams, whether full- or part-time seem as fit or fitter than our lot. Is it the type and the quality of fitness training that is key? I thought we had a fitness coach. Surely our fitness levels should be better than they are currently.

[Nick Potkins]

Location Location Location.
Let's be honest, some of our players are miles off others we see week in, week out from visiting teams. A London cabbie earning £100k plus, playing part time for a team within 50 miles of London will not located to Torquay. Simple. . .

[MellowYellow]

Location Location Location.
Let's be honest, some of our players are miles off others we see week in, week out from visiting teams. A London cabbie earning £100k plus, playing part time for a team within 50 miles of London will not located to Torquay. Simple. . .

Not necessarily - it all depends on what one see's as quality of life. There have been and still are many who cannot wait to move out of London for numerous reasons and are willing to downsize to do so. London growing at half the rate it was a decade ago is a case in point.