Every Wednesday in the Herald Express, our Torquay United correspondent Richard Hughes takes a sideways look at what's going on in the World of the Gulls - and this week, he wonders how the negativity from some fans is helping Torquay United on the pitch
Be careful what you wish for – but more than that, be careful how you wish for it! OK, Torquay’s performance against Dover Athletic was not the best, but it was a win and it was three-points gained to end a three-game National League South run without a win. It also followed a frustrating defeat at Hereford in the FA Trophy.
But before Brett McGavin’s fabulous 59th minute wondergoal, there were fans on the Popside singing the refrain: ‘Gary Johnson, get out of our club’. And I am not sure how that helped the team at all. How can it?
Imagine you are a Torquay player genuinely doing your best on the pitch, you are trying to stay focussed and do what the manager wants you to do, how the manager wants you to do it, and you hear the crowd singing they want him gone.
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Hardly inspiring is it? We all know what noise can be generated at Plainmoor when the drum is going full-tilt and the Popside is getting behind the team, when that cry of ‘Yellow Army’ spreads to the Family Stand and Bristow’s Bench and people who normally don’t indulge in chanting rise to their feet and clap to the beat.
We all know how that makes us feel. In big games, when support like that has been needed in the past, it’s tingle-time, pride rising to the surface and putting the opposition off their game. Fans should be pro-Torquay for 90 minutes and make the other team’s players feel little, insignificant – not their own. How does that help anyone?
What they talk about in the pub afterwards is not going to affect the left back’s game when he is young and starting out on his journey, and has just given away a penalty. Wait for the pub, or the journey home. I know I will come in for a bit of stick for this – just as well I don’t read social media – but I guess when you get to my age and have it all before, watching fans slag off their own team just leaves me cold.
You can have your views on the ownership, the manager, the left back, the injury list, the price of the chips (£4.50 a portion, by the way!) – but please don’t let it affect players’ performances during the 90 minutes that you have paid to watch.
“It’s all very well for you, Mr Hughes, you don’t have to pay to watch it and you get paid to write this rubbish!” “Yeah, fair enough – but why not target your anger elsewhere, at the opposition, to help your team win the game?” Within reason, of course.
I had a chat with a former non-league footballer of some standing in my local the other day and he told me how those players turning at at Plainmoor to play for part-time Aveley, part-time Worthing, part-time Dover, even full-time Eastbourne Borough, would be feeling when they walked out on a brilliant pitch, in a stadium more akin to a league one that a non-league one, to play a game in front of 2,500 plus or something fans.
For a lot of them, these are their big days in football – perhaps their biggest. Torquay United is a massive team at this level and that should be giving us huge home advantages – so when the chips are down performance-wise and the crowd gets on the back of our players, surely that only makes the visiting players grow in stature, confidence, belief.
As someone sitting near me on Saturday said when that song started up: “Oh, come on lads, that’s not going to help at all, is it?” This column is written before Tuesday night games – but the newspaper goes onto the shelves on Wednesday mornings. The newspaper industry is a completely different beast to what it was 10 years ago, five years ago, and even more so since the Covid lockdown.
So it’s unfortunate that I can’t comment on how brilliant the fans were in the pouring rain at Chippenham Town on Tuesday night. But I think we all know, with the foresight of our experience, that Torquay fans at places like Chippenham on a Tuesday night are – even when it’s raining heavily and the wind is blowing it straight into their faces – the very best in the whole wide world.
So I am just putting it out there: I know those of you who were at Chippenham were your usual supportive selves; as you will be at Worthing. And whatever the result – you have woken up this morning at Hardenhuish Park still Torquay United fans.
And when the next home game, against St Albans City on February 3 comes around, let’s hope the drum is louder than ever and the naysayers in the Popside get behind the team and forget about calling for people to lose their jobs until they are in the pub. A more positive Plainmoor can only be a good thing. And anyway, both Johnson and his bosses say he isn’t going anywhere.
So let’s all just pull in the same direction and at the end of the season perhaps then will be the right time for a serious assessment. Not the 34th or 52nd minutes when there is still a game to win and it’s all to play for. But £4.50 for a portion of chips! I’ll happily sing about all game...
The column due to print deadlines was written before the 1-1 draw at Chippenham Town on Tuesday night
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