SOS call to all Torquay supporters..

royalgull · Post by **royalgull** » 09 Sep 2015, 11:20

Why would anyone come to Plainmoor currently? Other than pure diehard yellow faith which only goes so far..

The whole country has had to tighten it's wallet and to expect people to pay around £20 to watch Torquay play part time teams with no support in a rubbish league doesn't hold much appeal, especially as we have very few players worth paying an entrance fee to watch anymore.

One off cut prices don't tend to work unless it's free or as close to as possible as Morecambe tried, however have their long term gates benefited? i don't think so. The only example I can think of where it has worked is Bradford who put prices down for both season tickets and match tickets over a long period and their crowds have increased.

I will be at the Bromley game but only because a friend of mine wants to go as he's a Bromley fan and wants to go to the ground, otherwise I'd have no wish to travel 3 hours, pay over £100 to watch us play non league football.

Added in 3 minutes 2 seconds:
Having said that though the club should actively go into town and canvas opinion find out why people won't go, reading facebook it seemed price was a key factor and I understand why the club has to charge what it does but they need to at least find out definitively why people won't come. No use just saying support us or not facing up to the reality of why people don't want to go to Plainmoor.

brucie · Post by **brucie** » 09 Sep 2015, 12:08

Wivelgull is as usual the only one who is right.

Appealing for people to support the club in the local paper is of no consequence and will not make any difference. Unfortunately the club is at its lowest ebb.
To hear the board say that Guiseley are now a bigger club than us, just about sums it up. I am not sure why the board are "shocked" by the attendance at the last home game.
The reason for the fallout was the Cheltenham defeat, followed by another defeat at Eastleigh. Being outplayed by a team who had ten men for nigh on all the game tells its own story.
Apparently we are told that we cannot compete with Eastleigh and Cheltenham because they are big money teams - yet they both lost their last game to "minnows" so how are other small teams managing to win these games?
The Guiseley game was apparently " a hard to win game", yet they were recently beaten 4-0 at home to Aldershot.
Making excuses about how good the opposition is every week is all well and good but for Christ sake Guiseley are part timers.
The ONLY way to increase attendances is to provide a winning side. Unfortunately the current board do not have the financial clout to make this happen. Therefore attendances will continue to drop, its a sad fact.
New investment or ultimately new owners with more money are probably the only way that the club will survive.
This is not a criticism of the new board at all - but realistically this is the predicament we find ourselves in.

Post by **Scott Brehaut** » 09 Sep 2015, 12:22

It's very difficult to know what more to do really.
We really do need more investment.

As has been stated above, we need a winning team, but in order to do that need more improvements to the squad, which can only come about through investment, which can only come about through more money being given to the club, which can only come about through more people coming through the gate, which will only happen if we start winning....!!!!

There are many on here who are already doing their bit, either purchasing season tickets, paying on the gate and/or paying money each month to the players fund. Alas, none of us are made of money and we all have other pressures on us financially.

What we need is for somebody to win the lottery....

brucie · Post by **brucie** » 09 Sep 2015, 13:15

So there you have it - times are really as bad as they can be because even me Scott agree on something. He is dead right though - perhaps we ought to start a lottery syndicate with all profits going to Tufc !

Post by **Scott Brehaut** » 09 Sep 2015, 14:19

brucie wrote:So there you have it - times are really as bad as they can be because even me Scott agree on something. He is dead right though - perhaps we ought to start a lottery syndicate with all profits going to Tufc !

Indeed - I think I'm going to need to lie down for a bit.

tomogull · Post by **tomogull** » 09 Sep 2015, 14:50

I think Steve Breed and chairman David Roberts are being a tad impatient. I wouldn't go as far as saying scare-mongering. So far this season, the average gate is above their sensible 1800 break-even figure. There will be games such as Guiseley and probably Boreham Wood, Bromley and Dover (home fixtures in forthcoming weeks) where gates will be below 1800 but there will be games against Grimsby and Wrexham (shame it's on a Tuesday night) when gates will be, or should be, over 2000. The club has been like an oil tanker heading for the rocks and it's going to take time to turn it around. For the last three years, the previous regime seems to have taken no financial responsibility, merely relying on Thea Bristow to bale out the club each month. We are at a very low ebb but I believe there are signs of improvement under Paul Cox and behind the scenes by the new Board. We all have to be patient - we're only just over one month into the new season. Don't forget, we're still paying Chris Hargreaves and Lee Hodges each month. I have no idea how much they are being paid, but a guesstimate is at least £5000 per month.

Wivell and Brucie are right !!! Fickle fans will only turn out to support a winning side (Whitby Town are having the same problems - isn't that right, Wivel ??). One simple way of increasing the gate slightly and hopefully create more interest in the team would be to re-introduce the halftime school matches. Often last season, they were more entertaining than the main event !! This would bring in some parents and hopefully the lads and lasses playing would want to come back for future matches.

Yes, Brucie - we probably are on a par with the likes of Guiseley at present. There must be someone ploughing £s into Guislely for them to be able to afford to stay at the Palace Hotel before last Saturday's match. They weren't a bad side, either. In spite of their 4 - 0 defeat home to Aldershot, they played some decent football and knew all the tricks in the book for slowing the game down in the last 20 minutes when they were tiring. There were at least four stoppages for 'injuries' and yet the fourth official only managed to find three minutes added time !

SenorDingDong · Post by **SenorDingDong** » 09 Sep 2015, 15:02

tomogull wrote:I think Steve Breed and chairman David Roberts are being a tad impatient. I wouldn't go as far as saying scare-mongering. So far this season, the average gate is above their sensible 1800 break-even figure. There will be games such as Guiseley and probably Boreham Wood, Bromley and Dover (home fixtures in forthcoming weeks) where gates will be below 1800 but there will be games against Grimsby and Wrexham (shame it's on a Tuesday night) when gates will be, or should be, over 2000. The club has been like an oil tanker heading for the rocks and it's going to take time to turn it around. For the last three years, the previous regime seems to have taken no financial responsibility, merely relying on Thea Bristow to bale out the club each month. We are at a very low ebb but I believe there are signs of improvement under Paul Cox and behind the scenes by the new Board. We all have to be patient - we're only just over one month into the new season. Don't forget, we're still paying Chris Hargreaves and Lee Hodges each month. I have no idea how much they are being paid, but a guesstimate is at least £5000 per month.

The rumours I've heard about Hargreaves is that he was on £2k a week alone, plus Hodges wages on top of that. If Hodges was on only £500, that's 10k a month or £120k p/a. This is one of the reasons we're so threadbare at the moment. If they'd get off our wage bill then that'd give us 2/3 quality Conference level players that could be the difference between the current team and a top half of the table finish.

Almost makes me think that as much as I like Paul Cox and think he's a much better manager than Hargreaves, we should have kept Hargreaves on board for another season. Told him to accept the team budget cut or resign, I highly doubt he had a clause in his contract that the wage budget must be a certain amount, so he'd have had the choice of accepting the reduction in his playing budget or resigning and saving us having to pay his wages. Seems a bit of a weird decision for the board to have made sticking them on gardening leave when it sucks up a quarter of our total playing budget.

wivelgull · Post by **wivelgull** » 09 Sep 2015, 17:28

There was trouble at mill last Saturday at the Turnbull Ground (home of Whitby Town FC). With our opponents down to ten men they scored two goals in the space of a few minutes (defensive howlers) to go 2-3 up. Furious arguments broke out in the Grandstand (mainly generational as far as I could hear); the main bone of contention (this occurs at TUFC too) was that one old geezer (you know the type, there's always one - with a piercing voice and a stream of negative criticisms) was being taken to task by the enthusiastic younger element (whom I supported) for moaning continually and loudly.
The sparse crowd of 235 continued to watch gloomily (until we equalised in the 88th minute).
But you keep on keepin' on, don't you?
Moral for TUFC supporters: (1) don't put up with moaners while the match is going on (I know what you're going to say: 'brucie is a moaner'; but he isn't, he makes extremely good and valid points and I'm sure he supports the team when they're on the pitch).
(2) Be grateful you don't get 'crowds' of 250 or so.
(3) It's always darkest before the dawn.

CraigUnder · Post by **CraigUnder** » 09 Sep 2015, 23:06

A Torquay fan has set up a gofundme page, it has been shared across various Facebook groups and on Twitter. Thought I'd share it here too. #saveTUFC

SenorDingDong · Post by **SenorDingDong** » 09 Sep 2015, 23:25

Bleeper wrote:A Torquay fan has set up a gofundme page, it has been shared across various Facebook groups and on Twitter. Thought I'd share it here too. #saveTUFC

Makes no sense we already have the players fund if you want to give directly to the club or the Forever Yellow fund if you want to give to TUST.

Neal · Post by **Neal** » 10 Sep 2015, 06:38

Actually I don't believe you would get 3600+ on a nid week game if IT WAS FREE, that's how bad it is.

Bloody hell I agree with Brucie as well.

Basingstoke Town were nearly promoted last year. They have got the same management team, same players although they strengthened in a couple of positions, and everyone was waiting for a promotion push. You know what, they havnt won a game this season. Its unbelievable! But its football. The point of this is, what will turn this current team into a mid table team, It wont be much but it wont be easy to work out. I know its an excuse, but the team has been cobbled together at the last minute and its showing.

Winning team will mean more attending.

The people who are not attending because we are not winning are risking the clubs future. They will all have their own reasons no doubt, and whatever they are they are willing to take the risk.

aggrey_25 · Post by **aggrey_25** » 10 Sep 2015, 10:40

With respect to the board asking for the fans to show their support its quite frankly poor and desperate especially after this article coming out:

This is clearly from the way they axed the previous management and thought they would leave without any action being taken, I mean what were they thinking was going to happen?! The actions of the new board have put us in this position and I'm not surprised the attendances have dropped. Being in London I try to get to as many away games as possible to show my support but find it hard to pay all the money to watch the quality of game I could watch on hackney marshes!! I only see this going from bad to worse and its issues like this which is why we are in this position today.

Lets hope more investment can save us before its too late and we end up like a Weymouth.

Torquay United could go out of business if some of the club's former employees win court cases against the club, director of football Dean Edwards says.
The Gulls were taken over by a consortium of local business people in the summer, but laid off a number of staff as they tried to cut costs.
"We have a couple of people now who are trying to take us to court," Edwards told BBC Sport.
"It's a problem for us. Ultimately it could finish the football club."
One person has already won a case for unfair dismissal against the National League club, who could face a bill of up to £250,000 if all the cases went against the Gulls.
"I understand their situation," Edwards added. "They felt they've probably been wronged and they have every right to do it, and if I was honest I'd probably do it myself, but this is where we are.

Post by **Dave** » 10 Sep 2015, 11:05

aggrey_25 wrote:
This is clearly from the way they axed the previous management and thought they would leave without any action being taken, I mean what were they thinking was going to happen?!

Presume your talking about Hargreaves and Hodges. Both CH and LH were put on gardening leave, if I understand this right, they're both still contracted to the club (not sacked or made redundant) both are still being paid by the football club, both effectively on a 1 years paid holiday.

Where is the case for TUFC to answer as far as CH and LH are concerned ?

Glostergull · Post by **Glostergull** » 10 Sep 2015, 22:36

Why are you all assuming it's the former management team.. As I understand it there were a lot more redundancies than just the manager and assistant.. what about all those employed by the academy..how many were suddenly put out of work then with hardly any notice

Added in 1 minute 10 seconds:
I will come to some more matches and help swell the numbers if anyone from Bristol or Gloucester will help with a lift..will share expences.. we need bums on seats

Boumavilla · Post by **Boumavilla** » 12 Sep 2015, 19:43

New to the forum!
The Gulls are my second team after Aston Villa, I write for the match day programme for home matches

I'm hoping to pop down to Plainmoor next Saturday/Tuesday to catch a game but I now have noone to go with as my nan can't make it to matches nowadays due to her health.
Really want to do my bit for the club though, hope things will only get better for the club after this summer.

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