Torquay United Fans Forum

greb46 wrote: ↑01 Oct 2018, 20:07Could be wrong though also heard of Congo and The Congo!Sorry diverting from football!

There should never be a reason to apologise for deviating from football.....

'The Congo' is a region of Central Africa derived from the location of the River Congo which has Brazaville the capital of the Republic of the Congo on it's Northern (right) bank and Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on it's South or left bank.

The Republic of the Congo, is also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply the Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, is also known as DR Congo, the DRC, Congo-Kinshasa or simply the Congo. It is sometimes referred to by its former name of Zaire, which was its official name between 1971 and 1997.

Historically during the days of colonialism; the Republic of the Congo was called French Congo and The Democratic Republic of the Congo was the Belgian Congo. With a population of over 78 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populated officially Francophone country in the world and is the mother country of my four youngest children's heritage, and their family on that side refer to it as 'Republíki ya Kongó Demokratíki'

gateman49 wrote: ↑01 Oct 2018, 18:34 Your wrong, Merse. Check your facts before sounding off.

I'd better get it right because if all goes to plan I'm havng a free holiday out there next summer with my three youngest...

To be precise, it's Republic of The Gambia and I've heard Gambians I know in London refer to it as 'A Gâmbia' in their native Mandinka.

My good friend has a beach house there although his only connection ~ he's of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother ~ to The Gambia is his ex wife. His late father was the famous percussionist Ginger Johnson who played with the Rolling Stones and Fela Kuti...Ginger Johnson & his African Drummers.

THE Gambia ~ OK then; I'll remember that although I've never heard him it refer to as that in all the years I've known him

gateman49 wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 23:00 Either a 'fair weather fan' who isn't even sure what colour shirts we wear or didn't buy a programme.

Hmmn...I'd say a **** who can't come to terms with names that 'sound a bit foreign'.

The young lad comes from Gambia ~ what does he expect him to be called; Bill Smith?

Uberwozza-san wrote: ↑30 Sep 2018, 08:16Our 23 was rubbish, what is his name??

I think you've got off lightly with that stupid comment......give Saikou Janneh the respect and dignity of learning his name before posting such crass stupidity about an eighteen year old who's assist enabled the equaliser to be scored. Give his family the respect of working out how to spell his name too. If his mother or father are there in the ground hearing such ignorance, how do you think they feel?

Welcome to Torquay huh?

Others have pointed out the inaccuracy of your opinion; I only wish to ask you to at least discover the name of the player you wish to comment on and treat him with the respect he is due.

So much bollocks being spoken about Landricombe, Tiverton and wages...

No player in the Westcountry at that level would be on £400 a week; nobody!

Gary Owers himself told me how much was being asked for a striker well proven over three seasons at a higher level than Tiverton who he went for in the summer. A player on contract until the end of this season and the club that got him paid £35,000 for him to a club that averaged crowds of a little over 200 last season and he was one of three players they sold in the summer ~ not only to balance the books but also because the players knew they were worth better.

Last season the top paid players at that club were on c£200 all in; for training, travelling and playing inclusive of bonus ~ and that was in London. The club couldn't sustain it and had to clear the decks in the summer (a) because they lost their manager to a higher level and (b) because they lost the FA license to run their PASE academy which was a vital revenue stream. A member owned club with no benefactor and reliant on good providence and energetic pursuit of revenue streams in order to stay in business.

That player is a 24-year-old who had a trial with QPR last season and attracted interest from several clubs at National League level. He had treated part-time football as his number one priority ever since being released as a teenager from Chelsea Academy and done a variety of casual/gig economy jobs in order to support that lifestyle....many of those sort of players do; they need to be either self employed or working in flexible time demanding jobs in order to play at that level of football and do so because they live in hope of getting a full-time contract somewhere in the future.

Most of them are a 'different breed' to the full-time pro or academy loanees that Torquay United employ, I don't now what Landricombe does for a living, but playing for Tiverton won't be sustaining him and in any case he's been around for a considerable time now without ever being given an opportunity to go full-time and as brucie says, there's probably a very good reason for that.

Torquay United have obviously set their stall out to go straight back up from NLS; I would be very surprised if they were looking at the likes of Landricombe when there are still very good players ~ and last week's arrival of Jamie Sendles-White proved this ~ still looking for contracts who have been unpaid since the end of last season. Players already proven at the level Torquay United play at and aspire to.

Tommy O'Sullivan who was at Plainmoor last season is one such player; still out of work and still seeking that contract. It's a tough world out there with literally hundreds of players chasing only handfuls of contracts.

That's a good resume of events last night Sue with your unique position enabling that to be presented this morning...

It all makes nonsense of Osborne's talk of a new home for the Club in 2020. Things move at snails' pace with local authorities and there is much more to the equation than simply saying 'yes, we'll build it'

There is a significant new addition to the Gaming International board recently; Thai businessman Phanuthep Brarypaul. Whether that is of any significance to Torquay United and it's future ownership remains open to conjecture but people have to be aware and remain aware that there is now almost £1 million injected into the Club by way of loans engineered by Clarke Osborne and that a day of reckoning will have to be faced.

I think Hayman's post has been in recognition/a trade off for his shares...

Whether he was in Australia or not is irrelevant; both he and Brian Palk diligently unearthed the Roberts methodology and brought it to attention that it was the Club funding his purchase of shares necessary to take control of the Club which was financial suicide of course.

I very much doubt that Palk has that great a value of shares in the Club, but his involvement and contribution as an unpaid working director was legendary over many years and I agree with you he should 'enjoy' the same status as Hayman and Bristow.

timparks wrote: ↑20 Sep 2018, 19:55 Why was that game arranged?

You had a director who was a travel agent (A Jewish guy called Harry Benjamin) and he had done us a few favours on getting discounted flights to take the youth team to Holland for the Zeeburgia Pre-Season Tournament and this game was agreed to as a return of those favours.

You are aware who the Club's Presidents for Life are, aren't you?

Thea Bristow and Ian Hayman ~ Hayman was a director in the Bateson era and pro-active in bringing about the exposure of the Roberts regime. He was co-opted onto the ' Rowe Board' and I'm pretty certain was the man who brokered the participation of the Bristows within that initial set-up.

He is a United man through and through and done more than any other to maintain the existence of the Club through some very dark years. I'm sure he was instrumental in Clarke Osborne becoming involved during the Philips' regime and recently transferred a tranche of his shares to Osborne (taking Osborne's shareholding from c74% to over 90% which was the tipping balance in taking the club further into the almost exclusive domain of the man so that he now no longer needs to be so transparent in it's declarations.

I am sure Ian has done this for reasons that (in his considered view) assure the club of continued capitalisation as it continues to operate at a loss and has become the irretrievable possession of Osborne.

culmstockgull wrote: ↑19 Sep 2018, 19:19Regardless of his motives, he is no super rich white knight, Torquay United is a business venture, nothing more nothing less, whether that is a good thing for the United purists is yet to be written, judge him on what he does at United in comparison to other owners and so called chief executives we have had.

Anything I post is not demonization but pointing out the actuality of the situation...
I am not denying Clarke Osborne is a business man and that the Club should (and must) be run as a business and this is what the two people who now sit in the directors seating at matches as 'Presidents for Life' patently failed to do during their time in possession of the responsibility of running the club.

It was pointed out soon after the return to the Football League under Paul Buckle and Alex Rowe's board, that the club was being run in an unsustainable manner with no effort to lessen the very necessary capital injection to cover operating losses in favour of seeking additional revenue streams and business income; and that is how it continued throughout under the muddled ownership of Thea Bristow. She now sits there almost revered beside Ian Hayman and their escorts uncriticised by the local doyen of the press, Dave Thomas and I can't help but feel every time I see this that a large portion of protectionism and denial of the actualite is going on.

The whole point of the continuation of keeping on the front page what Clarke Osborne and Gaming International have been involved in over the past thirty years with sporting venues, is all about keeping people's feet on the ground and not allowing them to be seduced by a person who has yet to produce one single project such as he is talking about for Torquay United.

People closed their eyes to the profligacy of the previous era before the ruination of the last regime's ticking time bomb that had been indecently handed to them on a red hot plate by Thea Bristow and the rump of her outgoing board; surely it cannot be allowed for further delusion to continue in the manner that it had and in the manner that the Herald Express would have us believe.

If only judging Clarke Osborne on what he does at United in comparison to other owners were that simple ~ it is not; as most people are coming round to the notion have become aware of.

Yes; Clarke Osborne saw an oportunity of a land grab and fed the monkeys of the last board enough peanuts so they would become incapable of hanging on in their tree any longer. Yes; there has to be an end game (and a profit) for him and yes; Gaming International have capitalised the running of the Club to the tune of c£1 million in the manner of loans (not share purchase) and more than likely been able to set that off against tax demands on other operations within the group. To that end; they are behaving no differently than when they were propping up the Dave Phillps board.

But what we are talking about here (and always have been) is the avoidance of allowing the Club to go down the road that Coventry City did, which your local MP knows plenty about; and the disadvantages of being willing partners to ceasing to be a local authority tenant in favour of being a private one of Gaming International.

PhilGull wrote: ↑19 Sep 2018, 10:32 Or, to be more realistic, there will be no stadium, just houses for CO to make his money from before ditching the club.

A bit like Swindon Speedway then who are unfortunate enugh to be his tenants.

PhilGull wrote: ↑18 Sep 2018, 12:33 I'm fearful for our future even more now...

You need to be; everybody needs to be and not let their attention become less focussed on the long term aims of Clarke Osborne allied to the historic track record of the man...

Those aims might be perfectly honourable; that is open to debate, but what is not open to debate is his track record.

This stadium isn't proposed for the city of Exeter though is it; read carefully to see it would be within an area that reaches right down to the outer limits of Torquay, a town that provides an embarrasingly poor support for professional football; take the out of towners away from the Plainmoor crowd and what do you have left?

As I touched on, on BTPIR this morning ; why not re-locate the club to Newton Abbot or the hinterland around the Heathfield area if this 'rural city' gets built?

George Edwards (right) after the lunatic assaulted Gary Owers at Evesham

Southampton Gull wrote: ↑12 Sep 2018, 12:28 my views remain unchanged but then they would because my lifetime of experiences have given me those views.

It's not been nice reading this thread and appalling reading some of the ill-informed statements being made. Like Dave my views are fashioned out of personal experience and I guess that's where all of us are coming from.

I experienced the death of a young girl who was in my care because of her alcoholism ~ a young girl suffering mental health issues and using alcohol as an anasthaetic against the mental torture of living with the trauma of the mental scars of being sexually abused as a primary school child by a church pastor. An abuse that was covered up for many years in the cause of maintaining 'respect' amongst peers ~ there are many thousands of such child abuse cases coming to light and they all have terrible repercussions for the victims man of whom turned to alcohol to cushion the pain and even madness inflicted on them. Many of thier relatives also then turn to alcohol for the very same reasons.

I would no more think of her as a 'pisshead' than I would any other unfortunate street drinker/rough sleeper/social outcast I see on the streets on a regular and daily basis. It is simply not for us to judge...everybody we see like that has a tale to tell.

I was not a 'snowflake' in my care for her; but I did my best to be caring and compassionate; responsible and protective, But it was all in vain and the subsequent venting of anger and retribution brought about the end of my relationship with her mother, the loss of my home and the need to rebuild my life in middle age from the bottom upwards again.

Please do not throw needless generalisations about on this subject and remember that everybody making strong statements on this more than likely have them to make for very personal reasons.

I will not comment again on this subject.

ACW2IOW wrote: ↑05 Sep 2018, 20:16 A club 2 divisions below us earn this by way of renting out their 2 4g pitches at £30 an hour. Includes local schools that do their sports lessons there. Basically £300 a day easy profit in a average week. Car parking 100 spaces mostly full weekdays at £4 a car. £700 a week £350,000 profit on a sustainable club.
And still you lot think plainmoor is fine in today's modern running of a football club??
We are so far behind a club 2 tiers below us earn this much more than plainmoor generates.Do you get it yet??? Stay at plainmoor the club dies.

10 years too late to save the club and football has moved on off the pitch we have not. I agree with you whole heartedly on that and who was in charge ten years ago?

The business models that should have been put in place then were not, and they are very similar business models sustaining a host of small clubs at our level and below in the football pyramid by clubs that do only have one ground with no other training/ancillary facilities too aid them. I'm talking about clubs like Hemel Hempstead Town, Chippenham Town as just two as an example.

They achieve the sustainability that they have through hard work using their business sense that was never in the minds of the board that ran the club after obtaining it from Mike Bateson; all they wanted to do was take the lazy way out of using the benevolence of the Bristows who were silly enough to buy into that concept. It was obviously limited to finite sustainability and so it turned out...any fool could have seen that and all the time I was bending one particular member of that board's ear about it; he shrugged and avoided the issue.

Torquay United could perfectly well set up an expansive youth development structure that could be run in a business like manner and charge parents for their children's participation. They could perfectly well buy into the English Language School market here and make it attractive to overseas customers in the close season. The facilities are there around the bay to rent and utilise before any conceived new facility of the club's own even comes into the equation. They have the training ground in Newton Abbot and use of other education sites around the bay to persue and secure.

But the old board were too lazy and didn't want to know; their benefactor tired of the disproportionate financial responsibilty and quit and we are where we are now ~ in the hands of a predator who saw the bankrupt nature of the small consortium of supporters who took on Thea's poisoned chalice without a hope in hell of running it properly and yet here we are with two significant members of that 'Bristow Board' sitting there as Presidents for Life.

Well thankyou very much for leading us into this cul-de-sac of despair and hostage to Clarke Osborne; remind me to kow-tow to you when next I see you!