TT BLOG

Matty Hayward

@MattyHayward96

LET’S BE FRANK

Dear reader. This article comes in two parts, feel free to read one, both, or neither:

– There’s a bit where I assume the character of “Torquay United Fan” who, for the purposes of the article, is a sort of Bridget Jones type role, detailing her brief love affair with Frank Nouble. This section made some sense in my head when I thought of it, but now sounds utterly mad that I’ve committed an introduction to it.

– There’s a bit where I talk properly about football for a bit, but also sometimes mention Taylor Swift.

Part One – The Love Affair

We’d met and got to know each other online – of course – you can do that these days. He was an older man, tall, great sense of humour, reputedly great with his head. I was low, in a real state of desperation, and needed someone with a big heart to inject some hope. It didn’t start brilliantly: he was late to our first date and only lasted ten minutes. But he showed potential while I was despairing – one mistimed movement cost him the main prize – so I gave him another chance.

To his credit, he delivered. First, a date in north London. He still only managed 45 minutes in my company, but in that time showed all the attributes of a seriously good find. I thought Scunthorpe was an odd choice for our next trip, but he made it work and I was starting to feel a real connection. On Easter Monday he came to mine and bumped into my neighbour, East Lee. It’s safe to say the two didn’t see eye-to-eye, but I could feel myself falling for my new reliable hunk.

The penny really dropped when he took me to Maidenhead. We went on the train, had a fantastic day careering around all the local bars, and sung all the way home. I don’t mind telling you, reader, that he scored that day. Twice!

It was around then that I heard a rumour that some other girl up the road had been interested in him near the time we got together, but things hadn’t worked out. I had no shame in tweeting about him choosing me over her. I was certain that we were for real, and that any other dalliances were long in his past.

Even the most miserable night in Chesterfield couldn’t stop me from feeling this way: he knew the date didn’t go completely to plan and by the end he could barely walk, but I held out hope. A weekend in Manchester offered promise, but my own health was really deteriorating by this point. Though he notched again a week later, the pair of us decided to part at the end of April. We loved each other, for sure, and we kept in contact online, but he missed home and I didn’t want to burden him with my demise by making anything official. His “never say never” messages gave me hope, but we both knew he could do better than me and I had been punching from the start.

That was then, now here we are. Remember that girl from up the road that was interested in him before? The one whom I mocked for fumbling the bag? Well I’ve just seen on the socials that they’re an item!! I was clearly out of his league, that much was obvious, but SHE is DEFINITELY NOT in a higher league than me! And he said he needed to focus on his distant family, but she’s just up the road from me!

I thought he was different. I thought this time I had a man who I could love. I thought I could let him go in the knowledge that it was best for him. I thought his explanations were fair and reasonable, but they were just excuses to be free from me. When the time is right, and I’ll work it out soon, I’m going up there to give him a piece of my mind. Who knows, maybe I’ll take my new man Bradley with me! I’m starting to wonder if I ever liked him in the first place…

Part Two – The Bit Where I Actually Fulfil the Remit of TorquayTalk

“I thought you might be different from the rest but I guess you’re all the same”

Without meaning to sound like a teenage girl from a decade ago, sometimes Taylor Swift really does say it best. There was a brief moment, lasting perhaps a couple of weeks in the spring, where it felt like Frank Nouble really was the one. We’ve completed the Heartbreak Bingo card at this club: the grudging respect breakup, the gracious but no less sad breakup, the graceless breakup, the grateful that he left until he became good breakup. As our number forty five trudged off the Plainmoor pitch last April, there was some hope that this breakup would be brief, and minor, and our perfect relationship would soon be reconvened.

There may be some bitterness here, but there will be no re-writing of history: without a doubt Nouble had a profound effect on Torquay United. On the pitch, he was electric at times. Stronger than any striker I’d seen, decent feet, a real leader, the scorer of two fantastic and important goals (and one unimportant one), and a genuine outlet to allow Aaron Jarvis to do his thing. Off the pitch, he filled the cavernous, gaping hole of transparency that has been left by everyone at our club since Kevin Nicholson stopped taking to Facebook every time we conceded a throw-in. He gave fans a genuine connection to the ship that seemed to be sinking before their eyes without a battle cry or escape plan.

In fact, he was our escape plan. The last piece in the puzzle, Noubs joined at a time where we had – with nine matches to go – finally decided to assemble eleven footballers who started to look capable of winning a non-league football match. He was instrumental in winning games, yes, but he was also fortunate to be playing in a team that had a fully fit Jarvis, a mostly fit Asa Hall, a tenacious Kevin Dawson, and a starlet Nico Lawrence. This novelty combination of fairly effective recruitment and fairly fit key players (and a fairly regularly absent Dylan Crowe/Ross Marshall axis) ensured that the circumstances were perfect for him to thrive.

Thrive he did. In attempts to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we ever liked him in the first place, Torquay fans have gone straight for the goals-scored cheap-shot. We should be aware by now that that doesn’t tell anywhere near the full story. Nouble was never signed to be a primary goal threat. His job was – and has been for the latter part of his career – to disrupt, to bully, to hassle, to help the team move up the pitch by holding possession or buying a foul. He did that to enormous effect, and his decision to sack us off doesn’t detract from the fact that without him the team wouldn’t have functioned so cohesively in the games he played.

There are two games for which I will personally really remember him. The first, Maidenhead, which will truly go down as one of the great Yellows away days. Soon, we will be able to distance those memories from the memories of what followed last season, and focus on that day in isolation: the train cans, the start-to-finish singing, the AJ bullet header, the nifty Nouble lob, the inconsequential but still quite annoying but also very funny Asa-Moxey cock-up, and Mark Cooper’s post-match interview where he bemoaned missing out on a striker who “it looks like is gonna keep Torquay up.” To quote Moeen Ali’s Whatsapp messages, “Lol.”

The second game that’ll stick in the bonce for a while is Chesterfield away. Truly one of the most gutless, talentless performances I’ve ever seen from a Torquay side, albeit against a team who were far too good from the start. That night, Noubs was terribly unfit (he was far from the only one) and spent most of the time limping between the Yellows’ 18 yard box and the halfway line as the ball passed him by. This is the duality of Frank: a fantastic player on his day, whose days are surely becoming rarer.

That was then, now here we are. He’s signed for Yeovil, and I suppose I am pissed off about it. Not really because I was desperate for him to come back – I loved him, but I loved him in the way I love crisp sandwiches or a tax rebate, not in the way I love my family – and his fallibilities will surely be magnified in a league with more plastic pitches and more defensive cloggers who are even less compromising. I’m more pissed off that I sort of assumed better of him. I was suckered in by him appearing to be generally sound, by his apparent actual affection for the club, by the fact he seemed to see us as a genuine project, by the potential of him repairing the wreckage that he very nearly helped to prevent.

But I was a fool. We all were. Frank Nouble doesn’t love Torquay United like we do. He’s just some guy. He doesn’t care: very very few of them ever do. Maybe one day we’ll learn not to love again. Maybe after Jack Stobbs breaks our hearts.

For now, we’ll go to Huish Park in good song. If the Yellow Army wanted something new, and that accurately reflected their emotions about Noubs’ departure, they might try this to the tune of Justin Bieber’s debut single:

‘Nouble Nouble Nouble, oh, I thought you’d always be mine’

My sense is that the most common ditty sung by the faithful will be slightly less original, considerably more explicit, and a fair bit more confrontational. Frankly, Noubs, you can’t blame us.

COYY – MATTY

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