Continued changes at Plainmoor

As AJ rightly alludes to, Plainmoor and South Devon College certainly do look well equipped for at least 2 or 3 divisions higher than our present lowly NLS level. Nice video. Nice facilities at the college.

stewart 

There's no denying the important contribution that Gary Johnson is making, and he's one of the most important rungs in the carefully constructed ladder that is enabling us to climb to continued and sustainable success. A ladder that isn't cheap to assemble and that will need the planned new revenue streams to help maintain and improve upon it, as most fans would like to see.

For the moment let's continue to enjoy the successful winning football, laden with goals, that the big crowds flocking back to Plainmoor so appreciate. While not forgetting the determined words of our Chairman back in April of last year, as he underlined his ongoing commitment to the club and to it's enduring success.



“Our work in rebuilding the structure of this significant, fine Club will continue unabated, and we will see improvement across all areas of activity.  I have committed to funding that will provide the facilities and the financial incentives to secure promotion next season. As difficult as it may be to see in the mist of despair, we are making real progress and we will, with everyone pulling in the same direction, succeed. We will remain a full-time professional football club with aspirations on a national scale. We expect to be the best football team and club in the National League South, and we already know we have the best supporters".

CO (Apiril 2018)

At the end of the day you can only have 11 players on the pitch at one time and for a club our size I think a small good quality squad supplemented by loan signings is the way to go.

With less league games in this division and only a limited FA Cup run, means we have more than enough personnel to finish the job.

He can’t or won’t, stewart. And he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the past back catalogue of stadia non-delivery when addressing what you see as the obvious point.

AJ did try to blame others who supported those sporting entities without new stadia in a post about two years ago, but it didn’t appear even AJ’s heart was in it when it came to that assertion. It promptly fizzled out no sooner had it raised it’s head. Nobody can fail to notice he has rejigged that hopelessly unfounded position by taking swipes at Torquay supporters more recently. All the time refusing to acknowledge the Osborne record.

Most on these boards will make up their own minds on AJ’s 2019 approach to Stadia 2020 fairly swiftly, I’m sure.

Welcome to new Forum member, grockle. I'm sure we all look forward to reading his opinions on various issues as the weeks and months go by. Hopefully he's aware that Rob has made something of a speciality of analysing the opening 3 or 4 posts of new members across the Forums, and quickly going public with his conclusions. If he senses a pattern, he'll be quick to let us all know.....so it might be worth widening the scope of your observations early on 

Thanks to Stewart for his contribution. I'm sure I speak for many in always enjoying reading his posts. For ease, I've split his comments into the 3 paragraphs.


Stewart 


Pleasing to know there's always that underlying Brexiteer solidarity we can fall back on, even if we're not in total alignment on other issues. However, I think that the similarities between the growing political interference in professional football, and the development of the European Union will continue to become starkly apparent. As the influence of politicians and the State increases at a rapid rate on so many aspects of football, where we'd never have thought or expected the hand of Government and it's agents to have been involved before, I'd draw the same parallels with the early days of the European political monolith that has so blighted our lives, that it is an ongoing almighty struggle to attempt to free the UK from it.

When we think back to those earlier days, when we were told that a European amalgamation was no more that an arrangement in the best interests of trade between the nations. We'd probably benefit from seeing a wider and more exotic choice of produce in the supermarkets, but that was about all. Absolutely nothing to worry about, and British life would continue in just the way we wanted.

Now fast forward a few decades, and you are faced with the powerful undemocratic superstate. Just consider the last month or so. A superstate dishing out ultimatums to countries as far away as Venezuela as to how many days they are being given to hold an election, and dictating who their Head of State should be. Further plans to build itself into a giant military power, not just to better put down internal dissent whether it be in Catalonia or France, but to be able to join in with the bombing and killing throughout the world's conflict zones.

To understand the plan and to know that this was the eventual goal, listening to a local greengrocer switching to metric, or holidaymakers giving a thumbs up to an easier process for booking their fortnight in Rimini would gain you nothing. It was an understanding of the grand plan that the politicians and Eurocrats were working towards that would reveal the true direction of travel. Similarly, the focus needs to be on the ultimate goal of the politicians, and their creation 'Supporters Direct' in order to see the true picture of what the Trust Movement's actual agenda is all about.


Stewart 


The football club is earmarked as an integral part of the overall bigger Nightingale Park project. You won't have Elton John, the Rolling Stones, or even The Leylines, performing at the full sized 'Events Facility' stadium every weekend, and so the football club making use of the slimmed down version of the facilities will be ideal. Particularly bearing in mind GI's specialism in sporting venue hospitality and catering. I'd also guess that CO has had new advice from the senior staff he's brought to the club more recently. This has seen certain significant personnel changes, as well as other groups who may have been adjudged as negative influences based on their track record, being banished, or at least excommunicated. CO not being a football fan seems an irrelevancy while there's no well heeled football fan putting him or herself forward to cover the substantial losses. When they do appear, then yes, by all means urge CO to hand over the reins if a better prospect has turned up with his/her cheque book. Nor should CO be expected to be the person with sole responsibility to shoulder the financial burden to keep old fashioned dying sports with negligible public interest, on life support indefinitely. He does what he can, but anyone else can step forward and put money into dogs chasing round in a circle or rowdy motorbikes. If it's popular, if it's a money spinner, there'd be new tracks popping up all over the country. But there aren't.

Remember when the decision was taken to build houses off Cowick Street in Exeter. There was a demand for new rugby facilities, as rugby in Exeter doesn't drain your money away and businesses are keen to be associated with it and sponsor it. Just pop into pubs up and down the country this weekend, and people young and old will be eagerly discussing the rugby. They won't be talking about dogs chasing round a track or motorbikes spraying gravel. ITV or BBC won't be advertising a big weekend of greyhounds or speedway. Build houses on Sandy Park, and there will be the demand for a new rugby ground to be built. Where was the demand for a new speedway track ?....it's a dead duck of a sport. And while it's a sad story for fans anywhere that the old sports of greyhounds or speedway have gone by the board, no one with an ounce of common sense came along and got it going again. If there's money to be made people would be queuing up to satisfy the demand. CO is no longer looking back to those old sports we associate with the middle of the last century. He's financing new modern ventures, very different in nature. The major concert venue is a different concept entirely from catering for a dwindling band of elderly woodbine smokers wanting to watch dogs racing.

The young affluent concert goers, along with those who make use 7 days a week of the various other facilities that the Nightingale Park complex will provide, is a vastly different and more profitable business model. Some TUST militants attempts to conflate CO's modern business ideas for Torbay with a refusal to subsidise clapped out dog racing venues gets nowhere, due to it's obvious chalk and cheese comparisons, and convincing no one who stops to give it a moments thought. 


Stewart 



I don't know about 'more profit making', but over recent years supporters have seen the big threats to the club's existence being the extent of the losses that are connected with trying to run the football club from Plainmoor. Thea, even with her National Lottery millions, couldn't continue seeing her money draining away at the rate it was. Then not a single local businessman willing to step in with a plan to turn things around at Plainmoor. Instead some loyal supporters who were aware all the professional advice they were given said it made no business sense, and they were much more likely to lose a lot of their money. But they kept the club in existence, and paid the price (literally). So TUFC fans will be amazed and thrilled if the club can be associated with any kind of profit.......when it's been the consequences of the losses that has been the sword hanging perilously over our head for so long.

CO has come in and said 'yes you're buggered as a stand alone football club at Plainmoor......that's why you get no buyers coming forward. What you have to do is create a different business model whereby the non football fans of Torbay and South Devon keep you alive financially. Not by providing them with football, but with other facilities that they'll pay for 7 days a week. I can incorporate you within the Nightingale Park project. You'll be ideal to keep the Osborne Arena ticking over and in use whenever I've not got a big rock concert planned. You become sustainable and with a future, which is more than you had before I turned up'. 

A brave new start for the UK, free again. A brave new start for TUFC as a sustainable football club at Nightingale Park. Enticing visions that can both become reality, but only if the politically motivated wreckers are defeated.

There are some very astute brains who contribute to this site, but so far nobody has succeeded in determining whether he is deluded enough to believe that a property developer has decided to pour funds into the club, and find us a new ground appropriate to modern day demands, out of the goodness of his heart, while never showing his face at any of our games.

Or is he (AJ), who admittedly does write some very well constructed and unusually detailed responses, simply trying to wind us all up so that we respond out of sheer frustration and he is thereby inspired to continue posting his outrageous nonsense? Why not have a go and try to find out as the rest of us have failed?