Torquay United Fans Forum

the boss also

Go away and..

was a phonecall..

And some beer...

I have in the past used the catering on the popside,because i either did not have the time or could be bothered to get something to eat for me and the lad saturday lunch time.

However i found the service to expensive and slow,once i ordered two hot dogs and one drink,then after waiting for a minute plus the girl serving me still had not worked the amount i had to pay ,so i stepped in and helped,was honest aswell .

Now make sure we have something before we leave its chaeper and easier.

I do like the idea if a family ticket,i noticed while sadly trawling through some other league 2 club website's comparing gate price's,that some do operate this system,however largly confined to one area of the ground,maybe the club could have a trial period offering a section of the new grandstand up for family tickets,and see if it works.

I do fully understand about the current jobs situation around south devon,i to was made redundent in late 2006,as manufacturing industry has all but dissapeared around torbay/south devon,retail/hoiliday industry does not pay the sort of wages that manufacturing does,i also have 2 children.

However i can not execpt it as the root cause of the problem,and i seriuosly hope our directors,are not execpting it as 100% the reason,it is however partly due to this fact.

I put this on a banter base thread about our poor crowds,its true this really did happen,walking out of boots/laces after the bradford game,a chap standing there having a smoke says,was it 2.0 in the end,yes we replied.

To that the chap said,i used to go regular can no longer afford the £16 ,however he had spent the entire afternoon 30 seconds walk away from the popside entrance,and proberly parted with close to £50,is money the real reason why he no longer goes..no,he has lost his passion for tufc clearly.

To me passion is 50% the part of the problem,i know more than a few lads who like premiership clubs,they do not go,so i will not call them fans,i asked a few more than once would you like to come along to a tufc match,real live in the flesh pro-football,no is the answer every time,not going to spend £16 pound's wathcing that rubbish .

Like the lad above in this reply, every single one of them will not think twice about putting on there football shirt going to the pub on a sunday afternoon and parting with £60,when there team is live on sky,so to me money is not whole issue.

To me its about what we want as fans from tufc,if we are happy being an upper midtable league 2 then fine,what is all the fuss about?,or do we want to be a secure league 1 club,hosting the likes of sheff.w,charlton and southampton,with there away support see what happens to our gates then.

Increase our home fans by 500,it would bring around £150,000 plus,and then we have the player budget to achieve the above,lets get some passion in our supprt and stop excepting that we are a tiny club in the south west that will allways struggle to get fans.

happytorq wrote:Have to say that £16 is a bit steep for 4th level football. (I paid less than that at New York Red Bulls the other day, and I got to meet Thierry Henry and ride the train back into the city with him. Good guy)

But more than that, it's that same old story of apathy in the Bay.Our away support is fantastic when compared with the home attendances, and that's almost certainly because South Devon is often either somewhere you move away from, or retire to. Combined with the ubiquitous Sky coverage of pretty much everything, people are always going to be loath to go out to watch live football. This is why the club (and lower league football in general) needs to do more to make it appealing for people to come.

And no, I don't have any great ideas, sorry.

the thing is happytorq,you can pay up to £20 to go in at barnet,and northampton as said above with an average gate 4855,you pay up to £19 to go in.

whilst £16 may seem steep,it is compared to other league 2 sides a very competative price.

buckle says in todays H/E that benners has been carrying a knock to the knee and needed time with d.davey,fair enough,time to move on ,on that one.

i can see how being 2nd in the league going into the game being at home,and then playing 4-5-1 would rasie some eyebrows,however was stood with s-n-w at the game,and said to chris bring on kee,o'kane and see how this game will change,he brought those 2 and macklin,the game did change and the team twice nearly stole the 3 points.

to me was the formation wrong or the personel that started the game?.

WIVELGULL,do not agree with what you are saying re,age groups,iam 41 most of my mates are in there 40's,and if you look around the popsdie next time you go i think you will find the biggest age group on the popside is 35-45.

FONDA,shane i do see were your going with TORBAY UNITED,however i do not think that would work,for a start you have to think about the healthy support tufc has in newton abbot and kingstiegnton,fans from these would proberly say how about us in the name.

its more likely to be traverling from brixham ,paignton,totnes,newton abbbot etc,that may put fans off,i wonder how many think i will go the game saturday,then come saturday think oh the traffic the parking,nah wont bother.

as we all know tufc in the past have run buses in from south hams and teignbridge,and i know a few have suggested the club has a look at re-starting that service,iam led to believe the club has a pretty good deal with hookways,and a park and ride bus from paignton,and from newton abbot,may help to increase gates,and if sucsessful the service would pay for itself and then some,or a small charge for the user if prefered.

for me it is down partly to apathy ,25 years ago you would hear many say tufc lack ambition,cant afford to go up,sadly that same attitude still exsist's out there today.

how many times over the last 25 years have the club had,manager,assitant manager,goalkeeper coach,reserve team,youth team,centre of exellence,and its own training ground,and it does not flood bargin,tufc is no longer the joke league 2 club it once was,agree with plymouth gull we should not just except our level support,the club has to sell the product more,and convince the local man.u and chelsea t.v watchers,that tufc is a serious football club worth watching.

i do not think the club can do any more to target the kids than they are already doing,with football in the community,also local clubs can take there teams in for training with f.prince,the club also host kids birthday party's,to me the trick is attracking a child when he is 11,and keeping him/her as a fan for life,rather than the child reaching 18 and dissapearing of to the premier league.

over all i do not know what the answer is,however so far this season northampton have average gate of 4855,if they can why not us.

numpte wrote:2600 is about average for September against an undesirable team with no support. Whats all the fuss about.

do not agree,in our first season in the conference in semptember home to the likes of drolysden who have even less away fans,the our average gates were 3158 for that month,which shows what the club are capable of achieving in support.

saturday the gate was 2598,thats 560 less,if say 400 were adults and 160 were kids,that would work out to appox £169,000,in extra income on the gates alone,what would that do for the playing budget.

that to me is what the fuss is about.

I have to make clear like matt i am NOT having a go at drummer gull.

however i totaly agree with what matt says,it seemed to be case with last season's squad ,who was going to be first in the que to sign a new contract,i understand pro footballers and livelyhoods,however if you were not 100% happy at aclub you would at least check out your options.

not one of our players dragged there feet whilst signing a new contract,which would suggest that paul buckle is held in high regard by the players.

also was a bit shocked how quickly some turned on him yesterday,yep it was bad performance even the best teams have the odd nightmare,we have been on a fantastic run it was never going to last forever,the team need our support in the bad times aswell good.

SuperNickyWroe wrote:my match report.

nice to see my mate dave (forevertufc) as usual and thanks for the hospitality mate again.

Good to meet up with Jane, evertoned, oxgull and louis.

oh, as for the game, really glad i spent 4 1/2hrs each way in the car to watch that.

Not. :x

never a problem chris,and yes it nice to see some familiar faces yesterday,and to meet oxgull for the first time

Attendances is a subject on all our minds right now, after two successful seasons in the conference, promotion and consolidation in league 2,coupled with a well documented good run of results leading to the end of last season and the beginning of this season, still the fans are not turning up in great numbers.

Many may point to our rivals up the road, there attendances have risen, however I know a few Greek season ticket holders, and it would appear they have done nothing in terms of special offers like kids for a quid promotions etc to attract new fans.

With out wishing to heap to much praise on them, with events stabilising off the field and sad to say success on it, its clear to see why there gates numbers have gone up.

Is it a general state of apathy around the bay?, some still believing the club lacks ambition, some maybe still thinking we are still an out and out hoof ball side under buckle s management .

We all no the state the club was in when this new board took over, however I believe the rebuilding of our club is still a work in progress, with the new training ground, which I have been on recently, and with little work carried out so far, it is already looking fantastic, no doubt we will have a training ground to rival any at our level soon.

The new grandstand project, which will certainly tidy up the ground, and take away the embarrassment of the current grandstand.

Expanded youth department, that now includes five development centre s for kids 8-16, from Cornwall, into Plymouth, Ashburton, north devon and taunton,a system that does work as a large number of lads have been signed to our centre of excellence, practically from the Plymouth area, there is no doubt that the youth department, in a few years will once again supply quality players to the first team.

http://torquayunitedeadc.co.uk/site/index.asp

The point is, the board do appear committed to drive through further improvements off as well as on the field, and despite promotion back to the football league are not going to rest on its laurels, tufc really does deserve better supporting numbers from its fans, even if its just once a month as we all know money is tight for many at the moment.

Maybe the club needs to do more to get the message across on the continued improvements being made, alas a fear it may only be on the field success that may bring our attendance numbers, should the team still be in the mix towards the ends of the season then maybe our gates will increase, as I am not sure much else will work.

Think it may have been John milton,tufc's scout.However not totaly sure.

This game to me was 0.0 for all the wrong reasons,if that makes sense,just a truely awful game.

80 minutes to our first corner,bevan man of the match when i think he only made 2 maybe 3 saves,there keeper not called on once to make a save.

best and loudest chant from the torquay fans today was 'OFF,OFF,OFF' in a vien attempt to get there player who handled to ball sent off,sums up a bad,bad day at the office for tufc today.