Torquay United Fans Forum

Gulliball wrote:Saturday was a very depressing day. We played reasonably well for the first half hour, but once we went 1-0 down there was absolutely no reaction. The second half was as lacklustre as anything I've ever seen.

In previous relegation scraps we have had worse sides on the pitch, but they battled. At the moment we seem to have a talented XI in theory, but we're losing every week with no sign that it's going to turn around. We're very quickly running out of games to save ourselves as the gap grows larger and larger.

The seven hour journey home didn't help, but travelling back on Saturday night was one of the lowest points I've been as a Torquay fan having witnessed our performance.

Gloomy Gull wrote: Very valid comments. There were a few lone voices expressing doubt about CH taking the role, they were buried beneath the clamouring masses proclaiming the return of a club "legend" was just what was required to save us from oblivion.

How that view appears to have changed with a cold dose of reality ....lovely bloke, loves TUFC, NO relevant experience. My concern is that this being his formative time in football management will destroy his confidence and the supporters confidence in him as a credible option for successful times in the conference.

The same applies to the Board. This almost inevitable descent into the wilderness is likely to remove that last vestiges of confidence supporters have in them - lovely people (I'm sure), love TUFC, NO relevant experience.

My concern is that the Board will lose enthusiasm for the club and there will not be any willing and capable buyers looking to buy a club in crisis - as we surely will be by that time.

We need strong competent managers installed in ALL managerial positions in the next 6 months or I cannot see a future for our club that would allow it to rebuild.

hector wrote:I have been resigned to non-league football for a week now, after the Accrington defeat. But it just seems so needless.

In 1927, some forward thinking people, Charles Hore, among them, finally succeeded in bringing league football to Torquay. It seems crazy to think - in the context of what we have been led to believe over the years - that a small town by the sea, an outpost known for it's warm climate and convalescing properties, would be seeking to have a Football League team, in an era of steam-trains, horse-drawn transport, no motorways, no widespread telephones, tv etc...Torquay really was miles from anywhere, yet they were successful in getting league football to this town. They finished bottom in that first season but were never troubled by re-election for another nearly 60 years but we generally remained comfortable in the Football League. And so it remained for 80 years, despite the best efforts of David Webb (finished bottom twice) and Mike Bateson (finished bottom twice).

Bateson's great accomplishment was to preach the mantra that the club was too small for league football, even though it had managed perfectly before him, bar the vandalism of David Webb.

Relegation in 2007 was a consequence of the neglect that the Bateson's had overseen, with the club having less of an infrastructure than Upton Athletic and coach by his family. The Roberts fiasco was a big part of that.

So when the new consortium took over and we fairly quickly regained our league status and then had two years in the play-offs, I really thought that those dark days of Webb/Bateson would be over and that, even though we might have the odd brush with trouble, mid-table was likely to be where we found ourselves.

The club has a much better stadium, we have - on the whole - had much better seasons and the infrastructure of the club is in a different league to that which the Bateson's left behind.

Yet despite the improvements, despite the fact that Torquay is nowhere near as geographically remote as it once was, in terms of transport links etc, I almost have accepted that the Conference is our future - our long-term future - and that maybe it should be.

The thing that worries me most is all of the funding streams that we will not have access to. The thought of being the non-league cousins of Exeter is not especially appealing and makes even more of an irrelevance.

I watched Exeter Chiefs today in front of a small crowd of almost 8000. To think, a few years ago, Torquay United, as a sporting entity, dwarfed Exeter Rugby Club but I was sat there thinking, if both are home on the same day...would I continue to forgo Premiership rugby (as I do now, if both are home on the same day) to watch Torquay play, say Welling United.

More and more likely, the answer would be no. For an extra £7 I can watch the best rugby players in the country or I can watch us lose at home to some part-time team.

The sadness of TUFC is it seems inevitable that the club will shrink. The fans (at home, as there will hardly ever be many away fans) will shrink to 1500, then to 1000 and as such the viscous circle that creates will perpetuate. Simply, we had to stay up but that is gone now, yet in my view, it is all so unnecessary.

The club have directors as fans but they have acted like fans - operating from the gut and heart, rather than the head - by jumping for Knill, and probably Hargreaves, rather than being rational about recruiting managers.

I do think with CH, he is unlucky, this job, at this stage was beyond any rookie and next season he can make his own mark but relegation is now almost a certainty, a sad, needless one, but a certainty all the same.

forevertufc wrote:Agree with your sentiment, but are any of the managers at fault. The club banked £600k for Bobby, Ellis and Eunan, once tax etc had been paid, there would still have been enough money to balance books , and BACK the manager, but we spent the money on a white elephant, was it the managers we've had, or the lack of backing that they should have had, you tell me.