TT BLOG

Clive Hayward

@Byehorse

Clive discusses the Gulls and more

PAUL MULHEARN

What an intervention from the sotto voce Scot! For anyone who hasn’t heard it, Paul produced a paeon of praise for the Yellow Army in his recent commentary on Radio Devon.

He basically said that Torquay fans are a huge asset to the club. To paraphrase it: “They turned up in numbers to watch abject performances at Yeovil and Bath and what did they do next?- they sold out their 700-plus allocation for Taunton. The team and wider club hasn’t really deserved that support, and whoever comes in to run the club needs to recognise this.”

It was very nice to hear from a man who has sat and watched years of dross from his commentary positions. Paul normally sticks to the football. He paints pictures in a quiet, undemonstrative style, often accompanied (for 80 minutes at least!) by the legendary Dave Thomas. The Caledonian Coleman has earned the right to give an opinion now and again, and fair play to him for expressing it.

LIMBO

I know the club hasn’t exactly set a high bar (get it?), but the current silence emanating from Plainmoor is deafening. It is completely characteristic of George Edwards’ era for fans to be kept in the dark about the likely new owners of the club, but in this case I would be inclined to put most of the blame on them rather than him.

I simply cannot understand why people with preferred bidder status would not want to do some PR before all the I’s are dotted and T’s crossed.

Purely from the commercial point of view, sponsors and season ticket holders will want to know who is taking over and what their intentions are before committing to further financial outlay.

But it’s more important than that. Trust in football club owners is generally in short supply and lower than a snake’s belly in Torbay. That old word again: “Trust”. How can we trust people we’ve never met, and why is the Supporters Trust as much in the dark as all us other mushrooms?

It’s not good enough.

THE MANAGER

Aaron Downes went down in my estimation when he was working with Gary Johnson. He was closely associated with the on-field failures we all know about, although he did take our flak after away games (when Johnson just scarpered) and he was of course also there when we went so close to an against-the-odds return to the Football League in 2021.

Since Johnson’s departure Aaron has stood up to be counted. He has taken far more ownership of poor performances, and he did oversee a modest improvement in results. The performance in a big game at Taunton strongly suggested that the team were playing for him.

If- as I believe would be the right decision- there is a new broom for next season, the big Aussie can leave Torquay with his head held high. He seems to have some integrity and also never let us down during his playing career- with that possible exception of THAT hilarious red carded lunge at Telford.

FA CUP REPLAYS

There has been much condemnation of the FA’s unilateral decision to scrap replays from the First Round Proper onwards.

For me, this is just as much of a betrayal of most supporters and the history of our game as was the short-lived European Super League idea a couple of years ago. The source, of course, is very similar. Partly to try to stop the biggest clubs from slinking off to do their own thing UEFA has expanded their already-bloated competitions. This has led many Premier League clubs to demand that replays are removed from the calendar. The FA and the EFL have caved in, with scant regard for the good of the wider game.

There is so much to criticise here. I will try to pick out some of the most obvious points:

· Premier League clubs now have huge squads, and no expense is spared with sports science to keep them healthy. Admittedly there are now ridiculously swollen benches with 5 substitutions now routine, but to argue that it is too much for -say- Manchester United to have to play the odd extra match against- say- Port Vale or Scunthorpe is arrant nonsense.

· I would keep all replays if I could, including for Cup Finals and multiple match epics like Sheffield Wednesday v Arsenal back in the day. But I could perhaps understand it if they were binned from, for example, the last 16 or last 8 of the tournament. There don’t tend to be too many David v Goliath ties by the time you get to the fifth round. But the FA in their wisdom have decided to pull the rug from under all of us. No more Colchester v West Ham in Round Three. No more Round Two clashes between- say- Charlton and Cray Valley Paper Mills. Even a First Round Reply between Torquay and Derby County is now verboten. Just so Pep Guardiola can keep his fourth-choice left back fit for next season’s trip to Leverkusen.

· Never mind the £500,000 Exeter earned from their replay with Man U to keep themselves afloat. Don’t worry about the likes of Maidstone’s George Elokubi winning friends across the country this year, or – in 1975- non-league Wimbledon giving the mighty Leeds the fright of their lives and earning more dosh than they’d ever seen before. No problem that a well-run minnow club can make enough money from a short cup run to keep them going for 5 seasons or finance ground improvements. No. For £33 million the EFL has sold it’s own and hundreds of other clubs out.

· Finally- WE DO NOT NEED TO TAKE THIS LYING DOWN. The European Super League was defeated by fan power. We need to protest this loud and long until this shameful decision is reversed.