NLS: Torquay United v Truro CIty 3pm Boxing Day 2018

Thank you, will hopefully make it down for the game.

So are you suggesting someone should wander the stands with a list of those that have bought tickets in advance and put stickers on specific seats saying reserved, and then go round the following day and remove them all as they may not have been booked for the following match? Thats a chunk of manhours Rob.

Do they still give a ticket stub to those that pay at the gate and if so, does it have a seat number on it?

Used to get pissed off with removing those stickers, it takes one person the best part of a day to get them all off and the system clearly doesn't work. There has to be a better way like online sales seats are all in one block and turnstile ticket seats are all in another or something easy to allocate and marshal.

Rob, the website says "Fans will still be able to call the Club or pay us a visit to pay for specific seats during the week" so, as long as you buy in advance, you CAN get an allocated seat.

You’re right, it is just on match days that you can’t which i think is for reasons of speed to distribute the tickets and ultimately not for the unsuspecting customer that get ejected from their seats at 3 o’clock. Not really a problem for crowds of 1500 - 1800 but double that you are going to get a lot of strife and a new system needs to be clarified ASAP.

Nice to see that crowd...hope their keeper is back next week! 

Sorry about the Woking result...it's a bugger being pregnant at my age! 

A Boxing Day match that gave us some good football on a difficult surface as well as plenty of goals, mainly of outstanding quality, to be enjoyed as well.

Enough for both sides to find some positives from I would have thought. Truro have improved by leaps and bounds from the two or three early season games of theirs that I witnessed. The August and September approach of hitting it high and long out of defence has been binned and a neater more easy on the eye passing game, helped by the signing of a few better players, installed instead.

On reflection, Truro scoring first was probably just what was needed. It instilled some urgency into both the Torquay players and their supporters, and underlined that hard work would need to be put in to win the game, as Truro had no intention of presenting the 3 points as a Christmas gift to their hosts. By the time that goal went in, I think almost everybody had just about found a vacant seat to sit in. The two blocks given over to Truro supporters being an unnecessary extravagance within Bristow's Bench, thereby making the hunt for a place to sit that much more difficult for the many TUFC fans. The Safety Advisory Group's intelligence regarding the number of travelling fans seems to have been wildly inaccurate. It really is high time that this faceless organisation was dragged out into the open and made to publicly explain how they've come to give some of the 'advice' that they demand be followed.

Of course we've all read how the stewards, for the most part, left it to fans to sort out the seating differences between themselves. But there were a couple of people they did take action against. It wasn't much over 5 minutes after Truro had taken the lead that a Steward turned up to remove the Mother of the scorer of the game's opening goal. It was a damn good volley, and Motherly pride couldn't be subdued. Although standing up and applauding for a couple of seconds seemed quite restrained. She and possibly Harvey's sister or girlfriend were either taken off for interrogation by the SAG, or shoved into the desolate corner where the SAG can monitor anyone considering applauding a full blooded volley that puts the away team ahead.

None of those problems once the 'sticker solution' is up and working, I'd assume. Proposed by a TUST member or two, but will the self appointed 'Fans Representatives'  belatedly claim they have misgivings about the current system ? No indication that they've had the slightest concern up to now....but we've seen history re-written before. And on the subject of stickers, see what's outside of Plainmoor; although it could be positioned so as to attract young patriots at the school, rather than solely to catch the gaze of football fans.





And while on the subject of rabid Right wingers, how good it is to see that Felix sends us a few words at Christmas. When the question was posed at half time, the question being 'Where the hell is Annan ?'  there were two votes for Ireland, and 5 votes for Scotland. The two idiots that guessed Ireland, felt even more stupid when reminded of Annan Athletic. Felix has the ability to post on absolutely any subject and make it an interesting read, so fingers crossed he'll have a new years resolution for 2019,  to post here more often.


Our fourth goal coming so early in the second half, really did put the tin lid on things. Our fitness is superior to that of Truro's, and so now with a three goal cushion it was contest over. But the game was never boring, and the quest for more goals was never abandoned. A very late goal for Truro gave a touch more respectability to the scoreline from their perspective.


And let's finish by going back to the start. Pre match, with Gary Johnson sitting alone in the dugout, I was just about to tell him not to allow Psycho Janner to go easy on the opposition just because they were from Cornwall. But how dismayed I was to see Gary indulging in some politically incorrect 'humour' with one of the officials. 'I'll be Graeme Le Saux', I heard GJ say, before the Official chimed in with 'And I'll be Robbie Fowler' . Whereupon they went about re-enacting a famous scene from football history, that even Skinner and Baddiel might have been afraid to tackle.

What an entertaining Boxing Day it was.