Torquay United Fans Forum

hector wrote: Without wishing to be pedantic, Garry Nelson wasn't part of that squad. Bateson's arrogance is quite breathtaking in that clip.

Modgull wrote:Forget about the relative merits of the two squads. There is a common denominator which accounts for the two dreadful seasons - off-pitch disasters with management.

Last time we had a combination of ownership problems and a manager who had never managed in this country before.

This time we had a manager who blew up under the pressure of the job and a Board who couldn't make up their mind how to deal with it until too late.

In most seasons it is Clubs with behind-the-scene problems who go down. Often they are financial in nature. But rarely is it just because their squads are inadequate.

chunkygull wrote:

they were awful. the worst ever. no comparison. there were a few players that had been ok but were past it, also some went on to have a couple of good seasons.

most of the seriously bad ones i cant remember, there were many players who came and went via loans, trials and short contracts.there were quite a few inexperienced young lads mixed with a few has beens, if i am remembering rightly.
i shall have to dig out a few old programmes and get the full list.

here is a list of some of the more memorable players, not necessarily the worst-

ashley bayes, tom kelly, chris curran, lee barrow, ian hathaway, richard hancox, tony bedeau, wayne thomas, alex watson, jamie ndah, scott partridge, ellis laight, gary nelson, simon travis, paul baker, paul buckle, russell coughlin,

we had a few managers as well - don o'riordon, paul compton + kevin hodges (caretakers), mick buxton (caretaker), eddie may.

guess how many league games we won that season - out of 46 games - go on guess - drum roll please - wait for it - brace yourselves -

5..... yes thats right 5.

if you want to see how bad we were check this out, mainly from about 2 minutes in. bateson is quite funny in this near the end.



are we really that bad now?

Scott Brehaut wrote:Oi, I don't mind being called fat, or froggy, but friend?! With a northerner?!

What a f*****g liberty

Jerry wrote:If you think we were bad then you should have seen us in 95-96!

Scott Brehaut wrote:Yes, looks very tight on you if I recall....

Jeff wrote:The best story for me from that season has to be surrounding our own Ryan Jarvis.

Jarvo was quite the hot property back then, and we enquired about loaning him from Norwich. The reply was something along the lines of "erm, no........ We won't loan him to you. How about his sh*tter younger brother Rossi who you've not seen play?". "Oh yeah, we'll take him" was the TUFC response.

Sensing they were onto a winner, Norwich chanced their arm further. "How about a centre back - Matt Halliday - as well, who's never played a senior game?" "Send them all" came the reply.

So we ended up with two players we'd neither scouted, considered, or even really needed. Rossi Jarvis was pretty abysmal, yet has somehow forged a half decent BSP career with Luton and then Cambridge. Halliday I actually thought looked like he might have had something going for him, yet sunk without trace.

A similar scenario occurred when we got Jamal Easter in - Nick McCoy was a "buy one, get one free" addition. We must have spunked a fortune on players we didn't need that season!