What Does It Really Mean To You

That just about sums-up how I felt about it.

The only time that I felt real doubt that we would do it was when we were drawing 1-1 against Northwich - I couldn't see us turn it around. I felt that the new signings were largely performing badly, the team selection was bizarre IMHO and it felt that there was a massive hangover on the playing front, although we were still moving forward off the pitch.
In retrospect, perhaps the great start the previous season was used s the comparison. By the time we had dispatched FGR, Cambridge, Rushden, Ebbesfleet and York I knew we would give it a good go and Bucks proved that he could turn it around again if needs me. There were only two moderately bare spells, but I never lost the faith that we could get back on track.

Whether we won or lost on Saturday I was very proud of the club.
As the final whistle went on Sunday I felt sort of surprised - we didn't do it the "usual way", hanging-on for dear life as they threw the kitchen sink at us.
I felt more elated yesterday and more so today - I read about Merse's young lad and his apparent lack of exuberance before the game and they considered the disappointment of last season. I felt the same up until kick-off, I didn't have any photos next to the Late, Great Bobby Moore statue, walking down Wembley Way to drink-in the atmosphere wasn't of interest, buying any of the merchandise or visiting the pubs.
I was able to savour every second of the post match celebrations of the fans and players though - that made the day for me.

There are many aspects about the BSP that I will miss - FGR away, the amount of games that we won (can't see it being the same next season!), the decent supporters of away teams who came-down to Plainmoor, some of the coverage (it has been much less inconvenient this season in terms of moving games). Plainmoor is undoubtably a much prouder place these days.

There is also the feeling of relief to an extent. I would have felt total disappointed that we missed-out at the final hurdle, but the uncertain future of Setanta, the further reduction in away supporters, the lack of funding for our youth set-up and the reduction in funding from businesses in a recession-hit Bay worried me more. I think that it is a fair assumption that we can expect at least 200 more away supporters per game - a considerable sum over the course of a season.

Hopefully the apathy of the stay-aways ends and we see a progression to more respectable crowds. The "I'm not paying to watch non-league" excuse has now gone (along with the "I'm not paying money to the Batesons"). Time will tell whether they are the oft quoted examples on the former .net site "I'd cut the lawn if it wasn't raining" or those who want to be part of a progressive club.
I was speaking to a colleage and her sister lives near Plainmoor and she visited Plainmoor for the first time for the Burton match - last week she bought a season ticket. I feel that there is hope after all!

Sorry! But when I read crap like some of the earlier post it makes my blood boil, can`t help it, I LOVE our club and for the people at the top to have pulled off what they have done is amazing! Tell me my feelings are wrong or miss placed if you like but you will never change me!

Jim that wasn`t directed at you mate by the way, just a general kind of thing really, bet there`s loads of people that feel that way but just don`t say what they are thinking because of any repercussions, well I for one will as anyone who has ever read anything on here before will know, I speak first then usually apologies later, when required!

I don’t mind admitting that I was crying on Sunday. You can’t explain to people who don’t understand just what this means to us. Every time I hear a news headline that mentions “Torquay United back in the Football League” it brings a tear to the eye. Now I’m going to bore the rest of you to tears with a long rambling post – feel free to scroll on by.

Hindsight does rewrite history and paint things differently. Chris Roberts was so close to being the man that killed our club, now he’s the irritant in the shell that formed the pearl -not that I’m giving him credit for that! I thought that Exeter had killed our best chance of getting back to the League last year and even the mention of that match has always made me feel sick – not just that it had happened, but that is was them that did it. I can put that behind me now. I might even re-watch the last twenty minutes to see what went wrong – something I thought I would never be able to bear to do.

In my mind I’ve been playing down the importance of Sunday’s game – probably as a psychological defence against having my guts ripped out again. I’ve been trying to convince myself that “all good things come to those who wait” and that we would definitely make it back to the League – it was just a question of when. I know the club is well run and there are other clubs that had to knock on the door for a lot longer.

After our last (I can say that now – as it clearly means most recent rather than final!) League game, Chelston and I walked down the hill into town for a curry and stopped for a pint at O’Connors. We got talking to some Hereford fans - great lads who clearly understood our pain. It took them nine years to get back in the League, and if you’d have offered me a pact with the devil for us to do the same then I would have bitten your hand off. I was thinking more of Accrington Stanley who had topped and tailed our miserable season – introducing us to our new “saviour” at the home game and kicking away our escape ladder in the away game. It had taken them forty-four years. I honestly asked myself if I would see League football in Torquay again in my lifetime.

There was unbridled joy shortly after when the news of the takeover was confirmed. Utter despair turned to hope, but I think it was John Cleese who said “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand”. The last two seasons have brought far more torture and heartache than if we’d trodden water two thirds of the way down the table under Merv and Leroy.

How would our new regime go down in history? “During the relentless decline of the club, there was a brief period of hope just after we were relegated from the League. The new Board threw money at the club and achieved some decent results, but just missed out on promotion twice. Crowds fell away and the Board was left with no choice but to return to severe cost-cutting and the downward spiral continued ….”.

The crowd for our first game with Grays was fantastic – there was real hope that the people of Torbay would get behind the club. But crowds fell away even though we were hardly ever out of the top two. We had a wobble at the start of this season and crowds deserted in droves. I would hate to think what the financial loss for this season would be if we had not had the FA Cup run and the play-offs.

How much further would or could the Board back the club? If they had stared down the barrel of an unmanageable loss this year, would they put their necks on the line again? I don’t know the answer to that. I hope they would but I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. I wouldn’t have given up in disgust if they had started to rein things in a bit. I asked myself if I would axe the youth scheme or slash the first team budget. I would hate to make that decision because I wouldn’t want to do either.

I would have stuck by the club like the fans of Barrow and Southport, Halifax and Scarborough have. But I certainly wouldn’t have been happy – and I wouldn’t blame anyone who gave up.

It has really annoyed me when people have talked down the BSP. It is a vibrant league. The quality is little different from League 2 – we’ve certainly seen better football in the last two seasons than in the previous two. The stigma perpetuated by all this “pub league” nonsense puts people off coming – and that apathy or antipathy to “non-league” could have killed us. As long as we could get crowds of 2 to 3,000 in the BSP we could keep buying our tickets for the play-off lottery until we came up trumps, but once those gates started to fall …….

I saw the cheap early season ticket offer as an ingenious sort of “disaster insurance”. Now we are in the League, those people would probably have come anyway – so we’ve probably surrendered some income through the price-cut. But if we had failed in the play-offs and not got off to a flyer next season, how many would we be down to in the “pub league”? What would happen if we geared up for another big push and the crowds didn’t come? Would we better cutting back costs in the expectation they wouldn’t come? Tough decisions - I can understand why the club took the option of ring-fencing some income to insure against the “meltdown scenario”. The fact that it’s probably now cost us money is good. It’s like paying your house insurance – you do it but hope you’ll have wasted money because your house hasn’t burned down.

I noted the clearout at Kidderminster – the club that could still have pipped us to a play-off spot up until the last day of the season. They narrowly missed out and are now having to cut back big style. There are rumours that the same will happen at Cambridge. Would we have survived disappointment unscathed? Thankfully, we will never know.

I can see why people have got desperate over the last two seasons – even if I think their anger has often been misdirected. Paul Buckle has had the backing to give it a real go – which of course he has done. But he didn’t have the resources that made success inevitable as some seem to think. Maybe people got angry at him because they thought that if he did fail, nobody else would have the same chance that he did. If Bucks screwed up, the purse strings would be tightened and his successor would not be starting from amongst the front runners, but from the middle of the pack. It would take an exceptional season to get us up from there. You know Oxford will go up eventually. It’s quite funny watching them sweat and you’d be happy for them to have to wait another few years, but their size means it is inevitable they will return. It’s the same for Luton and probably for Wrexham, Mansfield, Cambridge and even York. But it isn’t for Torquay – staying down forever was a real and horrible possibility.

We’ve got the best Board and off-the-field team you could hope for. We have been doing just about everything right (o.k. Bucks may have made a mistake or two!). Everyone at the club has been working their socks off and the focus and strategy have been excellent. That deserves success – but football isn’t fair and you don’t always get what you deserve. You can do everything right and lose out to a dodgy offside decision, a slip by a defender or a penalty shootout. Common sense says that doing all the right things and working hard must bring its reward. It doesn’t always, but thankfully it has for us now.

That’s why I was a bag of nerves before Sunday. I knew we’d done the work. I knew we were prepared. I knew we deserved it – but I didn’t know if we’d get it.

The Legends Night was fantastic and I tried to convince myself that this was everything – that the heart and soul of the club was in fine shape and that what happened over ninety minutes didn’t matter in the bigger picture. We are a club doing all the right things and heading in the right direction – it didn’t matter what league we were in.

I lied. I tried to trick myself to protect myself from bitter disappointment. It does matter. It matters tremendously. As Winston would say, “This is not the end. It’s not the beginning of the end, but it might just be the end of the beginning”. There is hard work ahead. There will be disappointments and upsets ahead. The moaners and whingers will still have plenty to get their teeth into, but I am now confident that what we have seen over the past two years is laying the foundations of a club that will maximise its potential – whatever that is. That work has not been in vain, the risks taken by those who dared to put their money where their hearts are will not be in vain. We will succeed. I wasn’t sure of that at 4 o’clock on Sunday, but I am now.

TORQUAY UNITED ARE BACK IN THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE!

Dave!
Read Jon's post and tell me that it isn't the post of the season!?
Jon, thank you, and may all TUFC fans remember it in the season to come...

I think it is probably the best post I have ever had the pleasure to read on the forum, from the very start of the forum we have been blessed with so many quality posts, but Jon really has summed up how so many of us feel.

I did say I hated the last two years and I have, yes the football was very enjoyable at times, but not always, yes my whole Plainmoor experience has been the best it has in all the 40 years I have been going and that is down to forming such good friendships with people like Jon, Barton StuartB, chelstongull and so many others.

Maybe I never put into my post properly why I hated the last two seasons, it really only was because I have struggled to ever except we were a non-league club, I'm not alone and while I have felt the way I did, I never ever thought about not supporting the club and getting my money into it through the gate.

I would have still done the same next year and every other year that I have left in this world, as TUFC has been such a big part of my life and I really do not want to even think about it not remaining the big part it is and always have been.

I do know that the one thing that really has made things so much more bearable over the last two years, was the knowledge that at long last the club was in the hands of people who loved it as much as I did.

I fully agree with Jon when he says that if you keep doing the right things good will come of it in the end and I thank all those who have done so much, worked so hard and put their own money into keeping the suffering to a meir two seasons.

We are so lucky and must be the envy of many fans from other clubs, like I said before, we as TUFC fans have had so many tears to dry, broken hearts to mend, now its our turn to enjoy the good times and I'm sure they will only keep getting better.