Torquay United Fans Forum

I'm convinced that clubs like ours need to find a new angle when promoting the club. We all love going to watch Torquay because we are already hooked on supporting a team and we love the match day experience. We are then mystified to why other locals don't want to join in with all the fun we're having, but the fact is supporting a team is not rational, especially if that team is down in the lower leagues. Torquay United cannot compete with the premier league in terms of football quality and, lets face it, entertainment. Even if a newcomer comes to plainmoor and its 4-3 to the gulls they will still think the football was poor. Also watching a game from the terrace means a completely different viewing angle to the telly and that can take some getting used to as well. But none of us fans go to watch Torquay for footballing quality, we watch because it's our team.

From a business point of view, Torquay United's product is football. But it cannot compete with Sky Sports. its like a corner shop trying to compete with Tesco's, we cant win on this front. However our other product is a combination of match day experience and a team to support. Sky can offer better teams to support but not live. So Maybe it would be worth promoting the live football angle, that you can come and experience the atmosphere, the passion, the close to the pitch view, the bloke behind you swearing his mouth off, the gallows humour etc etc.
Sky Sports has packaged football into a safe, clean, sterile product. There's none of the roughness round the edges that you get when going to a live game. Why do you think Sky go mental over bad refereeing, goal-line technology or players that aren't 100% professional (i.e. Balotelli)? It's because these things bring the Sky product of football into disrepute. No controversy, perfect robot players, no idea of what its like to watch a football match live because your sitting in a pub and Gary Neville is doing a goalgasm over the sound of the crowd.

I think our club (and others at our level) should be marketing Torquay as Real Football warts and all, the opposite to what you see on the telly.

As others have said it's not that Danny is cutting inside all the time its that he starts doing it far to early. Against Dons he rarely started on the wing and acted more like a second striker playing behind Howe. All the guy has to do is start on the touchline to give us more width and we will be a much better team going forward.

Well that was rubbish. We were useless and Dons were slightly less useless. I'm convinced that if we had played them a month ago we would have played them off the park. But anyway well done to them, I reckon they'll be fighting for promotion next season.


Someone needs to tell Stevens he is a winger. Yesterday he spent all game trying to be a central midfielder and as result not only was he useless, but he made the whole field congested. Eunan, Rene, Morris, Manse, none of them had a chance to play their game because Stevens was making the pitch so narrow. Even if he just stood on the touchline and done nothing he would have stretched the Dons defense and given us some space to pass the ball.

Anyway it is disappointing not to grab the chance to get back into 3rd. But I'm actually not too bothered if we don't go up. Unlike under Buckle I don't get the feeling the squad will fall apart if we don't succeed.

It was unlucky that Rene didn't just put the ball in the net once he was round the keeper. And it was equally unlucky that Eunan missed a sitter in the first half. Also very lucky that Oxford fluffed several chances to kill the game off in the last 10 minutes. Shall I talk about Tai's goal and the injured keeper/wind assist...

Very easy to blame the ref's performance but we shouldn't be relying on them. One of the reasons that big clubs seem to get the big decisions is that they create so many chances that when decisions don't go their way it doesn't matter. Poor teams get relegated on the back of a disallowed goal because that was their only chance.

Yeah lots of generic chants for players. Reckon it would be great for team morale, and good fun for us to come up with some individualised ones rather than chants that are used at every club in the country.
We have a well used forum and a core group of away fans so it's definitely doable.

Ill think of some later...

Great post Royal, agree with everything especially the bit about trusting the fringe players rather than busing in replacements. Also while there are a few stand out passers in the team, Ling has managed to get everyone to be comfortable on the ball. O'kane has been brilliant this season but we are not relying on him anymore.

Also like to add that The Guardian had us as 'jinx of the year' in their end of season round up after they featured us during our clean sheet run at the beginning of last season, only for the team to collapse until early spring. So media attention ain't all good.

We all know about Steve Evans criminal past so to watch a BBC piece airbrush the fraud, the bankrolling and the dirty tactics out of history is pretty galling.

I work as a steward at Arsenal and along with violence, overcrowding is by far the main issue. Obviously that doesn't really happen at a modern stadium, but at grounds like Broadfield it can happen if the club aren't careful. Crawley's approach yesterday showed that they did not give a damn about the travelling fans, to give us a corner while behind the goal is empty is stupid in the first place and to limit the space available is dangerous.

1. O'Kane
2. MacDonald
3. Olejnik
4. Ellis
5. Mansell

Wisconsin_gull wrote:Have read mostly concern for Rene's form after todays battle.

Martin Ling sees things differently..."I thought Rene Howe was outstanding today. He's a battering ram that's got skill as well."

In terms of defending from the front and causing shaky Crawley back passes then Rene was excellent. In terms of goal threat he was non existent most of the time. Rene isn't lazy, he just doesn't bother running for lost causes. Which is a good thing in my book, fans rate strikers who chases every poor through ball as if their life depends on it but in reality it has an effect maybe once a season. As I said previously if we had quick players around him then his hold up play would make us very threatening, it's just that now there isn't anyone to hold the ball up for.

Shame. The only thing better than beating Crawley would be to nobble them with some underhand bureaucracy...

Get in!!
Brilliant defensive performance today. Gave Crawley nothing all game, though the Ref was inclined to help them out at every opportunity, took our chance when it came and stuck it to that fat cheating scumbag and his mercenaries.

I am sure there are some loyal Crawley supporters who love their club and follow them as fans of other clubs do, but I suspect that the majority of home fans just go for the novelty of seeing live football every week. There were certainly locals in the away end and two gents in the ticket crew behind me decided to stand with us. It's perfectly fine for locals to go watch Crawley play as a Saturday diversion, but its obvious by the lack of noise that they don't really care about the club, and why would they?

I agree with ferrarilover that everything Crawley do is to gain some kind of advantage. Dodgy pitch stopping better passing teams, screw around with the away fans. But today for once we managed to rise above their gamesmanship and earn a very hard fought 3 points. Our strength is our teamwork and commitment that all the players show, this win clearly meant so much to all of them especially those who've been beaten by Crawley many times before.

MacDonald was amazing, haven't seen such an assured debut for some time. Hope he keeps his place ahead of Brain Saah.

Bit worried about Rene Howe, he was very poor again and is showing none of the swagger that he did before his suspension. The problem is that he doesn't have fast wide players to flick the ball on to so when he gets the ball he can only play it sideways. Rene is too slow to play off the shoulder of the last defender so he plays with his back to goal, which he is very good at, but it means that we often have no-one in the box. I'd like to see the two wide players play much higher up the pitch so Rene can play the ball forward and then hopefully catch up, if he ever does some running.

Morris was pretty rubbish as well. He is a intelligent player who is often in the right place, it's just that he looses concentration and makes stupid mistakes. He helps Nico out very well, so maybe Nico should help Morris out when going forward as he is never going to beat the fullback.

Jarvis seemed pretty anonymous, but showed lots of effort. Hopefully it will become clearer what his strengths are, not sure if he is a winger or another target man.

Their no 7 (Clarke?) is a disgrace. He won a freekick by holding Oastler's arm then slowly lowering himself to the floor, he dived after MacDonald shielded the ball out and another unsuccessful con saw him leap up and run at the ref.

Anyway we did them. Finally. A very professional performance against a side who normally get under a skin.



P.S. Is there anything the club can do to complain against that pitch? Surely there are some regulations and it's just done for Stevens's ankle as well as McFazdean.

Well at least we weren't subject to a hail storm this year!!

Very frustrating day all round. We stated brightly then faded and once they scored we fell apart trying to chase the game. Clearly we need another forward, someone with pace who can change the game with a bit of brilliance. Not one player managed to beat his man today, especially Stevens who was either ignored on the wing or marked out the game in the centre.
Rene started well, knicked the ball of their defender and started a move that ended up with Stevens hitting the post. But then the ref booked him for a late challenge (couldn't tell if it was deserved, but it was so early in the game that a yellow seemed a bit hasty), this and a few other ticking offs from the ref caused Howe to stop being physical and he basically gave up challenging for the ball. It would be easy just to blame Howe for this, especially he seemed to be sulking, but the ref hamstrung him with the threat of another sending off and a lengthy ban. If we had another striker in the squad then I think Ling would have subbed him.

The ref was terrible for both sides. Missed obvious fouls (one on Nicho and one by Morris spring to mind), took ages to blow his whistle and managed to confuse Saah with Oastler.

Not particularly down heartened though. More, "oh well.." than "You bunch of useless *****"

In October I, along with many other Gulls fans, went to Southend and saw the lads get hammered 4-1.
3 days later we changed formation and battered AFC Wimbledon 4-0. For me that game is when our current run of form started, so heres some rather impressive stats for ya (league only)


P16 W13 D2 L1

That makes us the form side in the country by a long way, 7 wins in 2012, 1 defeat in 16, 41 points from 48. Whichever way you look at it there isn't another team close.

Goals conceded in those 16 games: 7 (3 from Accrington away, so 4 in the 15 other games)

However the best stat of all is this, apart from the Accrington game we have not let the other team define the result. We have not had a win changed into a draw, or a draw into a defeat. If we score first we win. if we don't score the game ends 0-0. Tonight fans have talked about nerves in the stands but none on the pitch, we haven't thrown anything away. Nothing. Literally. (not even in the Jamie Redknapp sense)

A few months ago I posted asking whether we could sneak the play-offs. I said yes because I thought that we played good football that creates clear opportunities to score and so don't really on luck, and at the other end we defend well and make the opposition rely on luck to score. We have been lucky only in the sense that bad luck hasn't happened. We haven't scored a hatful of goals because we haven't needed to. Seeing how confident we are makes me believe that if we did concede first, or get pegged back, we would up our game accordingly. Both games against Plymouth saw us raise our game in a second half to a level they couldn't match. Tonight I listened on gulls player and never really thought that Cheltenham would score. For a fan of any lower league team that happens once in a blue moon.

I know we will loose at some point, we'll probably go on a bad run too, and teams below us have games in hand. But crucially we are playing as a team, relying on collective ability, rather than individual moments to get us results. Every single player since Southend away has done their job and beyond, no-one is letting the side down and today Chris McPhee came off the bench to replace one of our most important players in probably the toughest game of the season and no-one noticed the difference.

GET IN!

austrianandygull wrote:Atieno popped up with a goal at Rovers to get us three points and a goal v Swindon where we got three points also.

So his 2 goals have secured us 6 points. 2 goals in 4 (i think) starts isn't bad at all.
I can see that he isn't the greatest forward but I think he's a decent player who hasn't been able to show his best because he is clearly second choice. When he has played 90 minutes up front he's shown promise. What about that run versus Rovers where he gave 3 or 4 players the run around before having a shot cleared off the line, would have been goal of the season.
If we're playing 4-3-3 / 4-5-1 then we don't need more than a decent reserve striker to play up front behind Howe. What we do need is depth in the 2 wide forward positions, particularly another player who beats his man, i.e. Bodin. Often the best player in this situation is the young loan signing, someone with something to prove. Bodin was that player but theres loads of them available at clubs higher up the divisions.

he fits in well, the manager rates him, he loves it down here, not going to get in the Swindon team and is 19 and needs to play regularly.
Di Canio would be a heartless b*stard not too let him come cos we beat them. I imagine Bodin senior would get a bit annoyed at this as well.