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Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive discusses GEV guest Lee Mansell

I spent a large chunk of my Saturday morning listening to the latest Gulls Eye View specials, an extended interview with former Torquay captain Lee Mansell. He was very generous with his time, and retirement has clearly given him an ability and a willingness to lift the lid on his time in football, which included eight rollercoaster seasons on The English Riviera. If you haven’t yet seen them, there are links here. it’s a fascinating watch:

THE LEE MANSELL SPECIAL (PART 1) | A GULL’S EYE VIEW S4 E3

THE LEE MANSELL SPECIAL (PART 2) | A GULL’S EYE VIEW S4 E4

There were some fascinating insights and- if you get over-excited about these things- a couple of “bombshells” too. More of those later, but first it might be a good idea to refresh our memories about Lee’s lengthy career.

Career

Lee was brought up in the rugby stronghold of Gloucester but it was his skill with the round ball that led Luton Town to offer him the chance to pursue his dream in Bedfordshire. He went there as an 11 year old and seems to have sailed through their youth ranks, making his senior football debut in January 2001 aged 18. With the Hatters on an upward trajectory, first team opportunities were a little limited over the next 5 seasons leading to a clearly-unexpected P45 and a contract in League Two at Oxford United.

Fifty-one appearances and 2 goals later, Lee found himself as a young pro with a relegation on his cv- Oxford falling out of the league at the end of 2005/06.

Fortunately, Ian Atkins had seen something he liked, and Lee & his pregnant wife were enticed to South Devon: an opportunity to stay in the Football League and the security of a two-year deal starting with the 2006/07 campaign. As Lee rightly says though, the advent of Chris Roberts caused “carnage” (making one almost nostalgic for the late-Bateson puppetry era) and the better players were sold. Atkins left, more managers came & went, and after 79 seasons we found ourselves ejected into the Blue Square Premier.

The rest, as they say, is history. Paul Buckle arrived, was well backed by Alex Rowe’s consortium and the stage was set for the prime years of Lee’s career.

Although his time at Torquay was book-ended by two relegations, we were lucky enough to watch Lee at his peak, and he was in the thick of it all. Four play-off campaigns in five seasons, two Wembley trips and- as everybody thought- the club we love safely re-established in the Football League.

My younger Torquay Talk colleagues Sam, Tom & Chris were all there throughout the journey, and Lee was happy to relive it all in great detail.

After being made an offer he could most certainly refuse in 2014 (see below), Lee went on to three more seasons- and back to back promotions- at Bristol Rovers, where he is often described as a “legend”. In the unlikely event that any Gas are reading this, here is his winning penalty in the 2015 National League Playoff Final:

Lee Mansell Penalty Shootout Winning Penalty – Conference Playoff Final 2015 – YouTube

He had cut his cut his coaching teeth in Bristol, and made a good fist of a first season in management at Gloucester City, despite seemingly getting little support there from his Chairman.

He has opted for a little more job security nowadays, and is two years into a role with the PFA supporting pros all the way up the M5 corridor from Plymouth to the Midlands. His commitment to helping new generations of footballers really shone through, and it sounds as though he is a good mentor.

Good Times- Wemberlee, Wemberlee and the return to The Promised Land

Lee re-lived the trauma of the play-off loss to Exeter in 2007/08 and what most people thought (but didn’t say) was the pointless, anti-climactic schlep to Wembley for the FA Trophy Final, where an Ebbsfleet side that lives as long in the memory as British Eurovision failures secured the prize thanks to our very own Chris McPhee capitalising on a defensive blunder. My 6 year old slept through that match and I often wish I had been able to do the same.

Interestingly though, Lee said that the defeat which stung more was our televised 2-1 defeat to Aldershot several weeks earlier. It felt at the time like a title decider, and the Shots never looked back after pinching the 3 points on that disappointing Monday night.

As we know, it all came good for the Gulls 12 months later. They made no mistake at the second time of asking. Lee recalled that whereas Wembley 2008 had been all about suits & buttonholes, 2009 was an overnight stop, trackies on and treating the game like a normal away day. A very professional performance- never in doubt after Cambridge went down to 10 men- saw Lee back in the Land of Milk, Honey and…….better footballs!

It was interesting to hear that then and now, pros do set great store by being at a Football League club. The money is better, obviously, but what really floated Lee’s boat was the upgrade in tools of his trade. The PFA apparently give everyone a £350 boot voucher and the moment he realised he was really back where he had always wanted to be was when he realised that that the Mitre footballs in League Two were infinitely better than those used in non-league. Who knew??

Torquay dug in to ensure survival in 2009/10 and the defensive foundations laid then stood us in good stead for a run to the League Two playoffs in 2010/11. Despite an Old Trafford horror-show (see below) we “went again” in 2011/12. A very good season saw us come up just short again after a “sliding doors” match where a late Crewe equaliser knocked the stuffing out of a tired squad which couldn’t recover properly for the play-offs.

Let’s be honest though: we’d take being two games away from League One now, wouldn’t we!

A tale of two Gaffers: Buckle & Ling

It was clear that Lee absolutely loved playing for Paul Buckle and is grateful to him for the chance to resurrect his career. They are still in regular touch, and “Bucks” shows little interest in giving up the American Dream he is now living. Lee described becoming very emotional in one of his first conversations with Buckle, who made it plain that he rated him and was more than happy to honour the second year of his contract as he recruited players at great speed to have a right good go at getting promotion at the first attempt. It’s clear Lee had feared being rejected, and that this might have signalled the end of his pro career at a time when he had a baby daughter and a big mortgage. On the contrary, Buckle had clearly seen something he liked (they are not dissimilar midfielders) and the foundations for Lee’s future were laid.

I can’t remember the last time Torquay appointed two good managers in a row apart from the summer of 2011, when Martin Ling was recruited to replace Bristol-bound Buckle.

Lee remembers Ling fondly, describing him as having a completely different temperament and style from the spicy Buckle. He says Ling was incredibly laid-back, and their partnership got off to a great start as far as the player was concerned. Opinions vary as to what Lee Mansell’s best position was. He thinks he was best employed as a box-to-box midfielder. Ling agreed, and in 2011/12 he scored 13 goals doing that. In their first meeting, Ling looked Lee in the eye and said: “You’re not a right-back, are you?” This was music to Mansell’s ears, and he maintains that he was only ever “doing a job for the manager” when employed in the defensive role. I happen to disagree. I thought he was excellent there, but there is probably a reason why I have spent a lifetime working in local government and Mansell played in 586 professional games!

Ling set Torquay free to play some lovely football, and Lee was a massive part of it. He also made Brian Saah a “club captain”, freeing Lee from some of the community duties which he described as: “like having a caravan on my back” and allowing him to focus on being a leader on the field- remaining the team captain with armband still intact.

Lee Mansell – Photo courtesy Andy Styles

Bad Times 1. The 2011 Playoff Final

Graham Westley was an unorthodox and- for a time- a highly effective football manager. This Under The Cosh Podcast is a great listen, where he sets out how he did it and takes some ex-pros down a peg or two:

Graham Westley | It’s Time To Set The Record Straight! – YouTube

Torquay fans’ conventional wisdom is that the team “failed to turn up” for the 0-1 defeat by Stevenage because they were distracted by Paul Buckle’s impending departure to Bristol Rovers.

I have always been a bit sceptical about that. As seasons end the thoughts of many people in football inevitably turn to new contracts and opportunities and those lucky enough to be playing in finals are surely keen to make sure that a season’s hard graft doesn’t go to waste.

On the day, we barely got a kick. As Lee honestly says, we were overrun in midfield by two of Westley’s “monsters”. They were bigger and stronger than us, and once John Mousinho had bobbled in a shot from distance there was only one winner.

Lee gives some blame to the groundsman. He failed to water the pitch, and a slick surface would apparently have made a big difference, enabling Torquay- said to be the better passing team- to have played their way to glory. I’m struggling to go along with that explanation, to be honest. Obviously it was bad luck to miss rain in Manchester but the bottom line for me was that Stevenage had a game-plan and against most expectations were by far the better team on the day.

Bad Times 2. The Departure of Martin Ling and Relegation in 2013/14

Lee goes along with the belief of many that Martin’s illness and sacking tore the heart out of a mid-table side in 2012/13 and led to the catastrophe of relegation a year later.

Although he didn’t make direct criticism of Ling’s replacement Alan Knill, he clearly felt that things weren‘t the same around the club when he came in, and that his recruitment in the summer of 2013 was horrendous.

I would challenge this slightly, in terms of changes to the ways of working. You’d like to think that an experienced squad should be able to adapt to new management: it does happen all the time.

Few could disagree with the recruitment point though. Whilst there was a mix of incoming experience and promising youngsters, the squad underperformed massively. Lee is very clear that amongst the new players were some whose professional standards were not up to the mark. He described Torquay as a lovely place to live “with a half-decent night life” but he was scathing about the attitude of some of his new colleagues. He says there was a culture of “win or lose we’re out on a Saturday night chasing skirt.” That has always been a potential issue at Torquay (just ask Matt Elliott!) and historically many players have managed to combine a colourful social life with high performance on the pitch. Not this lot!

Lee felt that the likes of Kevin Nicholson and himself were having to do other people’s jobs on a Saturday afternoon. As we plunged back towards oblivion, some supporters took exception to poor results. It’s a sore point for Lee, who describes himself as having been working his nuts off and feeling betrayed by some fans venting their feelings at him.

His Torquay experience didn’t end well. He felt that Chris Hargreaves was a left-field appointment as manager. He would have liked to see someone with more experience brought in for the relegation scrap- and he is clearly still angry about having been asked to take a 50% pay-cut for a one-year deal in the National League, only to see other players brought in on better money.

It was time to move on. The next phase of Lee’s career was successful, whilst Torquay were unable to halt the slide with financial problems leading eventually to the club falling into the hands of people with little interest in football.

We Can’t Finish Like This!!

But this piece isn’t about Torquay’s horrible latest decade.

It’s about a wholehearted professional who gave us the best years of his career- not to mention two hours of his time last week.

Getting players in their prime hasn’t happened often in recent seasons at Plainmoor, and so I think the best way to finish is thank Manse sincerely for all his efforts and for the many memories that will last a long time.