Torquay United Fans Forum

Here we are then, our first home game of pre-season v Bristol City.

As the thread title implies, it's time to concentrate on TUFC.

We kick a ball on Wednesday and things will move on from there.

For me, as usual, it's one game at a time.

Then we'll see where we are after pre-season, the first 5 League games, then 10, then going in to Christmas/New Year . . . . . .

I totaly agree it is time to concentrate on ourselfs,however as you say Brady buckle and Rovers as the season unfolds will contnue to raise its ugly head.

This is not the first time by a long chalk this has happened to use,and no doubt in the future it will happen again,and again, thats why i think the club went for Ling over Forster/Baraclough,if either of those two as young up and coming managers had done well they would have been snapped up from us aswell,where as Ling being a bit more long in the tooth may not be such an attractive propersition to other clubs.

I do wish us Torquay fans would develop more of a seige mentality,to often when the going gets tough,many of our fans ,say feck thats it never going again,rather than toughing it out.

I do think in Ling we have a proper football manager,yes he has had 1 hit and 1 miss in management and each fan can spin his recore which ever suits the mood,however he does come to our club at a difficult time,i am no doubt that we will see him recycle the squad a few times before he gets it right,but he will get it right,there is a good base left over from last season,our defense is stronger,midfiled minus Stanley is still not a million miles away from lasts eason,up front is problem,however depending on who ling brings we could be not far off the strengh of last season,i do not see a relegation battle at the moment.

All we can do as fans is support the team on matchs days the way we allways have,these next two seasons are going to a rough ride,however if the club can ride it out,we will be stronger long term with Ling than Buckle that i am sure.

A certain parrot owner dud a 10 year deal with premium tv and used the cash before he left so we have more than 5 years to go

The website is better now cos if the news updates but premium tv still control lots of it and some sections - like the commercial managers bits are still a sodding joke - learn how important the Internet is guys please!

AndyC wrote:I agree with regards to the website - while we get a lot more stories nowadays, some areas of the OS are brutally ignored, most notably the first team profiles/squad list page which still has Ashley Hemmings on it FFS!

Tim is too busy sending all his "scoops" to the other mob to actually do some work on the OS

Who - Teeboo?

Maybe we could get the phantom Wikipedia editor to update it - clearly on the case with all the latest news.

Couldn't agree more with you all, I too believe the website should be kept up-to-date at ALL times. I'm merely just stating the reason as to why I think it isnt. Having worked as an IT manager, I rarely found I had that much time to sit at my computer to do anything. I was constantly solving problems with servers or fixing one of the idiot staff's problems because they didn't understand that if you pull the keyboard lead out, you can't type anything.

Does anyone actually know the webmaster or even anything about them/their role? Whether he/she is part time or full time etc?

Perhaps with the new IT department for Westlands we could get the students to update it for us!

Really they could do with getting away from that horrible PremiumTV template that they use. I wonder when the contract for that expires? I'm sure we could still use the 'gulls world' stuff as a plug in, but the design of the website right now is pretty naff. I also don't like how I have to go through a 'splash' page every time.

grumblegrumble

I agree with regards to the website - while we get a lot more stories nowadays, some areas of the OS are brutally ignored, most notably the first team profiles/squad list page which still has Ashley Hemmings on it FFS!

Cambgull you make some very valid points as regards the OS but i have to disagree about the webmaster role. The OS is the first and focal point of contact for many torquay fans and most non torquay supporting visitors to the club and to have it so outdated and poorly maintained undoubtedly costs the club on a number of fronts. I don't even bother to visit much anymore as there isn't anything of interest. From the club shop to the commercial side of things, the site is vital for encouraging supplementary income. Even the little things like regiment said about the lack of pre season fixture schedules being on there are unacceptable and happen all the time. I know money is an issue but can't we pay someone on a part time basis to blitz the website and revamp it so that it is a pleasure to visit and full of vital uptodate info about everything torquay united? It needn't cost that much surely? I would happily put a few quid in each season to pay for it as it would benefit me as well as the club and if most fans did the same we could actually pay the guys wages! The site needs to promote the club to the fans old and new and make them feel part of it and it just doesn't do that. Hence we continue to scaramble around for information and always hear it second hand on the OS about 40 years later! At the end of the day the club is a business but is not run like one. There are a plethora of initiatives and ideas that i even i can come up with that will help grow the business and get in new fans and new income. Not all of them will work but you have to try. I don't believe that the board are really trying to move forward and they are happy just to drift along. Yes we are solvent so they are competent at what they do, i'm not disputing that but it is so frustrating that so much much more could be done to get the club going forward. We need drive and endeavour and ideas.

Now I'm not sure what the goings on within the office at Plainmoor are like, but I'd imagine many of the staff are doing multiple jobs, including the webmaster who is probably spending most of his time fixing computers which are probably 25 years old by now. Of course, I am over exaggerating and using a fair bit of guess work but I shouldn't imagine I'm too far off reality.

Mr Webmaster, whoever they may be, probably has a list of tasks that they have to do of a day and changing the pictures and profiles of players is probably set for later on in pre season when the squad is together and they know the squad numbers, which they probably don't yet. That said, the pre-season fixtures should be up by now. Also, any big gaps in news being posted on the site is probably down to one simple reason... I'd imagine he needs a holiday every now and then and if he booked it 6 months ago, probably couldn't see the departure of Buckle et al on the horizon.

Essentially, there is no way the club could (and would) afford to pay the wages of someone who solely works on the website.

As for the pre-season tickets deal, fantastic idea! Lets hope 'Andy Candy' is the start of something really positive for TUFC and it's marketing around the area. Lets hope the community get involved and start believing that TUFC is worth going to see. Here's hoping for a decent season because a bad one could undo Andrew's good work.

Completely agree with the OP. We've been focussing too much on Buckle/Rovers recently. How well/badly they do next season will probably have very little effect on us other than the games against them and their games against teams around us. We need to move on and give our full support to our players and manager, who want to be at this club, and not those who clearly don't give two hoots about us.

I like the way Ling has done his business so far. I would argue his signings look pretty shrewd so far and could do a very good job for us next season. I know there have been several posts worrying that we have very little up front and Ling is taking too much time signing up players, but I would have been more worried if he had come in and signed up ten players in the space of a week. We may well have had a full squad but I reckon that he wouldn't have scouted properly and would have just been signing anyone, possibly on extortionate wages. At least this way he's doing his homework and signing hopefully the right players at a good price to us. If we're in this situation in three weeks then lets panic.

Final note, Torquay really need to sort out the OS. Its ridiculous seeing a squad of players with only half of them still at the club. I doubt it takes much to update the site yet we hardly see any movement other than the occasional three paragraph article. Get someone on the job. All it would take is half hour to an hour a day for someone, even Torquay can spare that time/cost.

I also don't like looking at the Squad link and seeing Wayne Carlisle and Ashley Hemmings still on there nevermind the host of other players no longer at the club.

7.Rodney Jack next.

just noticed on the OS under "fixtures" the friendlies aren't listed. i find that very poor. i know the dates have been posted at some point on there, but why are they not listed with all the other fixtures, or at the very least, listed in their own temporary "pre-season" section. anyone thinking they might just swing by last minute to catch a pre-season match will surely find it difficult if they can't find dates/times etc.

come on TUFC, these are just simple things we need to start getting right.