Fan's Eye View: Seeking beauty of Plainmoor

IT MUST have been during the summer of 1986 I began to suffer angst about the very purpose of Torquay United FC.

It was a time when the bare statement on the annual balance sheet that 'the principal activities of the Company during the year continued to be that of a Professional Football League Club' rung even more hollow than usual. Against the backcloth of managing director Dave Webb's scorched earth policy of 'structuring', the team again finished bottom of the Fourth Division watched by an average crowd of 1,240.

Within the town of Torquay an unholy alliance of local council, police and the hotelier-led business community appeared to regard the club as a commercial liability. For the publicity- conscious tourist industry the fear grew of a naff football team being bad for business.

Set against this sorry present was a scarcely glorious past. The club had never been in the (old) Second Division nor had experienced much in the way of cup glory. In a perverse fashion The Great Triumph had been to go 57 years between the first and second applications for re- election. The honours board was largely bare save for a couple of promotions, the odd reserve-team trophy and, aptly, founder membership of the Fourth Division.

Torquay United were in the League because. . . because Aberdare had been crap in 1927 and the club chairmen fancied a trip to the English Riviera rather than the Cynon Valley. Indeed, even the club's very election was the result of a dubiously contested second ballot.

But this accident of history mattered little for those still watching the club. In a sense they now possessed an almost Olympian attitude towards League membership: it was not the winning that mattered but the taking part. It couldn't be any other way but I was starting to have doubts. Watching Torquay United was purely habitual. The problem was that it was all so boring. A dozen years in the middle of the Fourth Division followed by two safe re-elections was hardly the stuff of legend yet I remember being resistant to all those new-fangled ideas coming from the Football League: automatic relegation to the Conference, promotion play-offs and a lower division cup competition.

My attitude was that if they started to meddle I would lose interest. Seven or eight years later I wonder whether I might have lost interest without those innovations. Not that I would wish to appear too eulogistic - I'm not one to shed too many tears about an early Autoglass exit - but the effect has been to make following a club like Torquay United more interesting, more exciting, more emotive and more like all those other things that supporting a team is supposed to be about.

From a personal perspective, whereas I'd presumed the FA Cup finals, internationals and big European games I'd attended would remain the peaks of my football watching - Liverpool v St Etienne (1977) and Everton v Bayern Munich (1985) included - I now, unashamedly, see two Fourth Division 2-2 draws as twin pinnacles: Torquay v Crewe at Plainmoor in 1987 (staying in the League by dint of goal difference) and Torquay v Blackpool at Wembley in 1991 (promotion won on penalties).

Maybe it was also to do with reaching the play-off final in 1988, the Sherpa Van final in 1989 and experiencing another close dalliance with the Conference in 1993, but I now understand the purpose of Torquay United FC.

The trouble is I can't explain it. It is something to do with survival. Certainly avoiding automatic relegation for eight seasons is immeasurably more meritorious than being re-elected simply because - nearly 70 years on - club chairman still fancy a trip to the seaside.

I think I'll settle, at the risk of sounding glib and sentimental, for saying it is all to do with personal and shared experiences.

You know, the usual sort of thing about being a football fan.