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Hi all, I'm standing in the Torbay Council elections next year, and I've made it clear I want the future of the club to be on the agenda, I personally feel there is no need to leave plain Moor, it's a lovely ground in the heart of the town, I'm interested in getting a lifetime lease or something like that from Torbay Council, I would be very interested to see what some of you on here think to that or have any other ideas of how the club can be supported by the council?. Neil

United already have a decades long lease on Plainmoor - the issue isn't so much the time on the lease but rather the Council's willingness to talk to Osborne. Any land swap/Council involved decision that facilitates a move to Nightingale Park, absolutely must come with a watertight legal agreement that nothing can be done to Plainmoor before United are playing in a new stadium*


*Not that I think moving to a new stadium under Osborne's ownership will be good for the club. The only way it works is if the Council or club owns the stadium.

I agree with the sentiment that the need to leave Plainmoor isn't massive at the moment. That being said, I do also think it is wrong to instantly shoot down any stadium plan - I think it has been well documented within the Torquay fanbase of CO's inability to deliver on promises before and is something that should definitely make us wary. However, the plans to create a new stadium that could raise additional revenue would definitely be a benefit imo, the question would be making sure they actually happen and as SeniorDingDong says above, everything should be watertight to prevent a field with jumpers for goalposts being put in place with us being booted out of Plainmoor.

Thanks for those replies folks, keep them coming, much appreciated. Neil

OllieGull wrote: ↑29 Oct 2018, 17:48I agree with the sentiment that the need to leave Plainmoor isn't massive at the moment. That being said, I do also think it is wrong to instantly shoot down any stadium plan - I think it has been well documented within the Torquay fanbase of CO's inability to deliver on promises before and is something that should definitely make us wary. However, the plans to create a new stadium that could raise additional revenue would definitely be a benefit imo, the question would be making sure they actually happen and as SeniorDingDong says above, everything should be watertight to prevent a field with jumpers for goalposts being put in place with us being booted out of Plainmoor.

Everything does need to be watertight but remember that although this is a club with security of tenure to a publicly owned body it is not a solvent or even remotely self-sufficient business...

Whilst we cannot allow the local custodians (the Council) of that security to relinquish it we cannot either contemplate the club being anything but self-sufficient as quickly as possible and that is the dilemma.

Eyes were taken off the ball amidst the euphoria of the regime that took over from Mike Bateson once he had clawed the Club back from the Chris Roberts debacle. But there was nowhere near a sustainable business ethos and it was hugely reliant on benevolence from a far from business savvy benefactor. I would go as far as to say that was a fraudulent abuse of generosity by a group of local businessmen who showd little or no inclination to get down to business and make he club viable.

This ultimately lead to it being where it is today ~ in the hands of a developer who called in the colateral put up when his capital injection couldn't be repaid. Now he has to engineer a return on that 'investment' and it will be very hard to achieve if the club remains at Plainmoor.

His 'plan B' must be to make it as viable a proposition as can be so that it can be unloaded as a capital venture should he decide his 'plan A' as part of a larger development is not going to come to fruition.

These are the responsibilities you will be taking on Paigntonfan if you manage to get elected.

Thank you for that merse, I'm going to collate all responses, and whether I am elected or not, even for the time of the election campaign itself I will endeavour to shine a light on what is best for the club. I am as ecstatic as all of you are with the work gj is doing and it needs to continue, and straight back into the nl for next season. Neil

Paigntonfan wrote: ↑29 Oct 2018, 16:03 I personally feel there is no need to leave plain Moor,

I suggest we do need to leave Plainmoor to be a sustainable club. Where we move too and with whom is a different question.

The age and size of our stadium, with little space and severely outdated facilities, makes significant non-matchday use practically impossible, meaning the loss of thousands of pounds of potential revenue every year. As a non-league club we lose out on TV broadcasting income so we are much more reliant on matchday and non-matchday income. Until we can increase the quality, size, and non-matchday use of our stadium, we will not be financially sustainable, and our future will remain uncertain.

As already stated everything needs to be 'watertight', but something like the original Stadium for Cornwall, one owner business model with Truro & Penwith College and Truro City FC being each granted a 125-year lease on a peppercorn rent might suffice.

Spot on there on all counts MellowYellow...

Even when I was at the Club back in the mid-seventies and early eighties, the brief was to make the business sustainable to take it away from benevolence. With the very limited facilities (far less than what is there now) a thriving lottery, car boot sales, antique markets, mid-week markets, target golf, firework displays, and it's a knockout were held at the ground. The social club was energetically managed to trawl as much revenue from the immediate neighbourhood as possible and the previously loss making tiny club shop and match day programme relentlessly marketed for all the extra revenue that could be extracted and made not only sustainable but profit making in their own right.

Do you know United were one of the very first two English clubs (Aston Villa being the other) to take fledgling steps with an obscure (in this country) American footwear company called Nike? That's true and it was made possible through the involvement of Bruce Rioch who brought the 'connection' with him when he first arrived from the company's home town of Seattle. In it's beginnings, Nike had been an American franchise for selling the goods of the Japanese sports footwear company Onitsuka Tiger and the players got free pairs of boots to wear which they generally hated the feel of. So the Nike 'swoosh' was painted over the existing but blacked out Adidas and Puma markings on their own personal footwear and everyone was happy ~ where there's a will there's a way!

Today you'd find it hard to prise most young players away from Nike.

The reason I threw that story in is because if at first you don't succeed you have to persevere and find a way in order to fulfil the potential of a business plan you know will work

Had a (then) allowance of a new artificial pitch been anything like a certainty; one would have gone down allowing summer long use of the ground as a skateboard park and childrens' playground with Ladbroke Leisure ready and waiting to underwrite the installation, set-up and running costs.

It is all so much better if there are facilities to generate daily income from six-a-side football, conferences, hotel use, and concerts; and the town needs to be positive and pro-active on that score before ever the football club is!

The Football Association were reactionary then and not yet ready for artificial pitches, the council were staid and fuddy duddy and the community were generally 'NIMBY' and that was nearly fifty years ago and no progress of any significance has been made at Plainmoor or within the town since. You wouldn't believe the degree of ignorance of what was even within their property as landlords of the ground shown by the councillors of the time when we showed them around the ground; the amount of hostility and obstruction within the local community and the general attitude of disdain towards the Club from those who should have realised they too could be stakeholders in a positive venture.

To achieve such things you need to win the mental battle first; we never did ~ only began the physical battle ~ and whilst it was being waged we provided a good income stream for the directors so they could lessen their personal levels of benevolence towards the business. To think that almost half a century later the same battle has still to be won!

Bumping this topic as it’s nearly vote time. The polling cards have landed on the doorstep for elections many of us wouldn’t usually vote in, should we this time round? Clarke Osbourne has put new stadium plans on hold pending the new council elections. Just who told him no chance mate? Should the local fans all make a point of re-electing them or even encourage those up for election to support staying at Plainmoor? Hope someone with more information can help us out here. Conscious we only have 2 weeks. I’m going to take some time out to fully read this topic.

There will also be a vote on the Torbay Neighbourhood Plan-or a referendum to be exact. Voting "yes" will help protect some 99 local green spaces from development including "Plainmoor Recreation Ground",Quinta Road allotments and Quinta Road School playing fields,though not Nightingale Park as far as I can see.

Nightingale Park is designated as a site for Sport and Leisure in the Neigbourhood Plan.

The only problem with listening to the views of everyone is that you end up making a decision based on none of them, by all means stand on a manifesto of keeping Torquay at Plainmoor, but that's it, you cannot control what one owner of a football club does, or what the council at large does, at large assume that its the councillors or MP's that make the decisions, god help us if that was true, its the paid staff who are the supposed experts in what they do and they tell the council what they can or cannot do. Unfortunately everyday local politics and to a certain degree national politics is 99 per cent mundane dribble and one percent something you can make a difference with.

bumping this topic as it's voting day

So the Tories have lost the council to no overall control.
Conservative - 15 seats (-9)
Liberal Democrats - 13 seats (+5)
Independents - 8 seats - (+5)
UKIP - 0 seats (-1)
Not sure what this means for COs plans but I think I'm right in saying the previous Lib Dem councillors were all against his plans?

Two of the Independents represent the Willows ward and I don't think they support Torquay united moving to nightingale park.