TT BLOG

Thomas Kelly

@tommyktufc

GEV GUESTS

Clive Hayward

Clive (aka Byehorse) joins the Gulls Eye View team for Season 4! His wit? Charm? Good looks?..I digress. Clive has brought something that we have required for a while. Research and organisation! Never have the GEV team had to work so hard and actually prepare for guest interviews like we have now Clive has joined the team!

All joking aside, Clive is a great addition and has helped us immensely by arranging many of the interviews below for you all to enjoy and has plenty of ideas to help us grow our content going forward. Welcome Clive!

Alex Rowe

Our first Gulls Eye View special episode of Season 4 was with former Gulls chairman Alex Rowe. Our interview coincided with the Bryn Consortium’s appointment (as well as the leader’s debate) and it was great of Alex to accept our invitation to speak to us about his time at the club and to explore the similarities and differences that his consortium experienced in 2007 compared to the Bryn Consortium this year.

Alex spoke so well in his interview and his broad knowledge of Torquay games of the past is simply incredible. Examples of this include Matt Green’s winning goal, courtesy of a small deflection away at Forest Green Rovers in the match when Tim Sills had to go in goal, impressed all of us. Just one magical moment of a tenure which oversaw the clubs return to the EFL at just the second attempt.

It wasn’t all plain sailing of course, also discussed was our heart-breaking end to the 07/08 campaign with play-off defeat to Exeter City, to defeat at Wembley against Ebbsfleet United in the FA Trophy Final, to whether he was close to sacking Paul Buckle after a slow start to the 08/09 season.

Even if you are a bit too young to recall his tenure at the club, it’s well worth your time to give the episode a listen with Alex going into great detail about the turning around of a football club at that point at rock bottom.

It was a fantastic interview and a great way to kick start Season 4 and this interview caught the attention of Michael Westcott & Mark Bowes-Cavanagh on their way back representing Torquay United at the National League’s Annual AGM meeting. More of that to come!

TT YOUTUBE Season 4, Episodes 1&2

Lee Mansell

LEE LEE LEE MANSELL! Lee joined us for a two parter in which he discussed his career in football, from the early days at Luton & Oxford, to joining the Gulls and the ride of relegation, promotion, play off anguish and the pain of relegation back out of the Football League, before looking into his time off the pitch with his brief spell at Gloucester as manager and his current role within the PFA.

Lee spent almost ten years at the club before leaving for Bristol Rovers after relegation in 2014 and he certainly had plenty to say about his time at Torquay United!

I loved the story of his agent having to sort out contract negotiations to Mike Bateson’s puppet, as well as his reaction to Chris’s Lee Mansell fridge magnet, which has been proudly placed on his freezer door for many a year! I’m glad we left that one until the end just in case he thought we were all a bunch of nutters! (We probably are to be fair!)

What I loved most about Lee’s interview however is you can tell he is a true leader and you can tell that he is someone who will always speak his mind, no matter what the circumstances, good or bad, which helped make it a great interview to be apart of.

It’s great to hear about the work that Lee is now doing for young players in his PFA role and his focus on giving back to the game which has served him so well in his career. We hope to get to see you at Plainmoor again soon Lee. We’ll try and keep Chris at arms length for you!!

TT YOUTUBE Season 4, Episodes 3&4

The Bryn Consortium

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that we would have members of the board at Torquay United join us for an episode of Gulls Eye View, I would have laughed you and asked you to unsubscribe to our channel! The prospects of having Clarke Osborne or George Edwards was never in a million years going to come to fruition and honestly, thank goodness!

To have Michael Westcott and Michael Bowes-Cavanagh join us for an in-depth chat about their backgrounds, about how the purchase of the club came to pass once the club was put up for sale and put into administration, their future plans & ambitions for our club, as well as providing open and honest communication with the fanbase in mind is something we’ve never before seen at Plainmoor probably since the Nicholson managerial days, was simply incredible.

It was an absolute honour to engage in conversation with them for nearly 75 minute chat alongside the rest of the GEV team and we once again like to thank them so much for accepting our invitation to speak to us with such great enthusiasm and openness.

If anyone has any reservations (why you would after the previous ownership), then I empower you to watch/rewatch our interview, which has quickly become our most watched video on our channel. You can see how passionate both Michael and Mark are about our club and in relatively such a short amount of time, have already made big improvements at Torquay United and it’s testament to the hard work that they and the Bryn Consortium have done and will continue to do so, to ensure that the club will never ever be mistreated in a way like it was under the previous ownership.

One thing I absolutely loved about the interview was the openness from both Mark and Michael that they value feedback from supporters and that the emphasis going forward is that Torquay United isn’t their football club, it’s all of ours.

A great example of this is the suggestion I brought up about looking to repay the generous offer from Weymouth FC, who last season donated £5 per adult ticket sold, to be donated to the TUST to help continue to fund the club whilst under dealing with the administration side.

It was a wonderful gesture and I’m thrilled to hear that the Bryn Consortium will look to ensure that the club will do something for them as a thank you.

We also ask the question all Gulls fans were desperate for! Why do we owe money to the Northern Lubricants of Hartlepool?!

We know that TorquayTalk is respected by many of you and we thank you once again Yellow Army for your continued support of us. We know how big of a role we all played in providing that vocal voice towards those who failed us and refused to accept responsibilities for the decline of our football club. We never learnt to accept the status quo; we knew we deserved better.

We will continue to provide our honest views and I know the Bryn Consortium would expect nothing less. With communication channels between supporters and owners now at levels never before seen, we know that good times are just ahead of us. We look forward to reporting on all things TUFC going into our new dawn. Times will be rocky, we will need to be patient and mistakes will be made, but Torquay United is back baby and we are fully behind the Bryn Consortium, who we know will have the fans at heart and the best intentions for our club. Up the Gulls!

TT YOUTUBE Season 4, Episode 5

Jim Proudfoot

The voice of many Premier League, European and World Cup commentaries on TalkSport, it was fantastic to be able to chat with Gulls fan Jim Proudfoot, divulging into his career into football commentary, his advice to anyone looking to take a career into football commentary, and of course his connection to Torquay United.

Jim went into fantastic detail about his career up the punditry ladder, from his time covering the Gulls for local radio during his time at university, to his work for ClubCall where he would report on all things TUFC pre internet, to covering England at major tournaments across the world. Clive even brings up a question that no-one has ever asked Jim before! Well done Clive!

Also brought up was his time at Setanta Sports covering non-league, to his views covering England in Qatar, to his views of the club both pre and post Osborne. It is a great listen and I can honestly say I learnt a lot from being apart of this interview. Thank you for your time Jim, I hope to see you at a Torquay game soon in-between covering the Premier League and England International games. Keep up the good work and continue representing being “The Torquay fan” proudly at Talksport towers.

TT YOUTUBE Season 4, Episode 6

Will Hancox

Our latest interview was with former Gulls player Will Hancox, one of the brilliant people behind the Gulls fantastic video packages on behalf of CutLeaf Productions, who have also provided content for EFL side Newport County in partnership with our new shirt makers VX3.

It was fascinating listening to him describe his time at Torquay United, talking about the difficulties at the time that the club was encountering off the pitch, recalling his pride at making his Gulls debut in a 3-0 defeat to Basingstoke in the FA Cup, to the two great escapes under Nicho. Will also brought up the controversy over a certain tyre flipping challenge between him and the former gaffer which may require a rematch. Over to you Kevin Nicholson for round 2!

What really impressed me about Will from speaking with him was his maturity and his focus and drive towards the future. Even when he was starting out his football journey at Torquay United, he made sure to have a plan B in mind in case things didn’t work out in his professional career as a footballer, something which a lot of young lads would have found difficult to focus on early in their careers.

With that forward thinking in mind came the idea to focus on his media work and to team up with his friends to start CutLeaf Productions. It’s safe to say the whole team have done a magnificent job in producing all the content for the club and the good news for us is there is plenty more to come in the near future. Will kept tight lipped though on potential incomings, but he gave a great insight into how all the player videos came to fruition and I was impressed with how quickly all the recordings came together.

Will continues to play football and recently moved to Brixham AFC, playing at the same level as Buckland Athletic in the Wessex League. We wish you all the best for the season ahead and hopefully the club can have another good cup run in the Vase and get to Wembley!

Thank you all for your continued support of TorquayTalk and Gulls Eye View. We love creating our weekly episodes for you and there is plenty more to come ahead of the new season. Special shout out to Swanny who does most of the grunt work in getting all the episodes edited and recorded. We’d be screwed without you mate!