Isolated Plymouth

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

beesrus wrote:

Same old nonsense and discussion. Isolation has nothing to do with Diagouraga whatsoever.

Green Bay in Wisconsin is just about as isolated as it gets too, with a population half that of Plymouth. Hasn't done the Packers any harm, being one of the most successful NFL teams in history.
And guess what, they're the only team and club that's "non profit" and publicly owned. There's no deceitful squire there snaffling all the excess cake and dispensing his fake wisdom. It's what's called a community club.

While I would obviously endorse your support for fan-ownership the Green Bay Packers aren't really a fair analogy.

They are one of only 30-odd NFL teams in a country of 350m and as such are insulated from relegation and guaranteed a fair shot at the best players on a rotating basis in a system where a salary cap prevents the biggest clubs in the league from hoarding talent.

Consequently having an NFL team is a licence to print money - the NFL TV contract on its own is £15 billion or so, which IIRC is three times more valuable than the Premier League contract we all marveled at when it was revealed. Unsurprisingly all the NFL franchises are among the very richest sports organisations on the planet - despite the small size of Green Bay its NFL team is listed by Forbes in the top 20 richest sports clubs in the world. (As an aside, these figures are one of the reasons why I'm convinced elite football will eventually make a concerted attempt to emulate the closed shop, abolish relegation and end the terror of a dodgy refereeing decision costing a top club the riches of Croesus).

In the very different world of Association football and the even more different world of English football, where a very large number of professional clubs exist even in small hamlets, factors like geographical isolation really do matter. It's self-evidently not the only factor otherwise clubs wouldn't exist here at all, but it is a very significant handicap to clubs in the far South-West.

It's not solely an issue of absolute geographical distance, but to repeat what I said in the other thread, the deterrent of being perceived to be on the periphery of your industry in a "hick" location with relatively few potential alternative employers nearby. The perception of the town or city itself does influence players to a degree. IIRC The Secret Footballer claimed that at Premier League level Sunderland/the North-East was an area many players would refuse to entertain unless they could get stupid money.

It was Sunderland and Hull mentioned as the two clubs Dave Kits... sorry TSF.. would never consider joining. IIRC we were interested in him when he was at Cambridge.

mcfry wrote:

I have recently been to a few different shopping centres and imo there is not much between them as they are all covered in chains. The main difference would be in appearance, especially with Drakes Circus Mall being the best that Plymouth could come up with, even with a blank canvas.

Drake Circus was the inaugural winner of the Carbuncle Cup awarded by the magazine building design for the worst building of the year. Surprised Princesshaye didn't win it becuase thatr is awful.

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akagreengull wrote:

PatDunne wrote:

akagreengull wrote:

Spent a pleasant evening in Exeter last night despite the rain, had a good meal at Carluccios which is the only chain would recommend and certainly handy in London. Then visited the excellent Fat Pig off Fore st and then Tabac bar at Central station which is handily situated above the station platform.
Yes Fore st is still a bastion of independence away from Princesshay, the great draw for me is the Cavern for independent music as is the Phoenix.
For the size of the city Plimuff is a cultural desert musically, unless paying mega bucks in the shithole Pavillions watching mainstream acts is your thing. Shame really because back in the day Plymouth was ahead of the game, the only bastions left are the Underground and Junction for independent acts.

don't forget the hub in bath street for decent bands, until its compulsory purchased and knocked down for the 'swanky' boulevard

Forgot the Hub, still haven't got there, although a few people have said it's a good venue, like you say best use it before 'modern Plymouth swallows it up'.

The Hub's a great venue, and they do training and education there too. Seen some really good acts there, over the years. There was a petition to save it, which the council seemed to have utterly ignored.

While the building itself is a tip, there's plenty of scope for forcing whichever developer ends up making a mint off the land to renovate and improve the old JFKs/C103 building, or provide a mid-sized venue somewhere else in the city.

Not that it'll happen, of course. When I saw them punch through the ground floor of Co-Op House, I thought the basement there would be ideal, but apparently that's becoming a gym, or something equally uninspired.

Hugh Watt wrote:

It was Sunderland and Hull mentioned as the two clubs Dave Kits... sorry TSF.. would never consider joining. IIRC we were interested in him when he was at Cambridge.

Was it proven to be just him? I thought there was some talk that it was a few players mixed together, although that might have been over the course of the sequels, after the original columns were turned into a book.

Anyway I don't think it was just his personal aversion to those clubs - he was saying that most players in general didn't want to go there if they could avoid it, or unless they were paid stupid money, which ties into the point about location. Having said that he did castigate Sunderland as being notorious among footballers as a badly run club with no ambition and their money going to players who were wasters and time-servers, so I supposed that's evidence that location can't be used as a catch-all excuse.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Hugh Watt wrote:

It was Sunderland and Hull mentioned as the two clubs Dave Kits... sorry TSF.. would never consider joining. IIRC we were interested in him when he was at Cambridge.

Was it proven to be just him? I thought there was some talk that it was a few players mixed together, although that might have been over the course of the sequels, after the original columns were turned into a book.

Anyway I don't think it was just his personal aversion to those clubs - he was saying that most players in general didn't want to go there if they could avoid it, or unless they were paid stupid money, which ties into the point about location. Having said that he did castigate Sunderland as being notorious among footballers as a badly run club with no ambition and their money going to players who were wasters and time-servers, so I supposed that's evidence that location can't be used as a catch-all excuse.

Its pretty much nailed on. In one of TSF's books he talks about being to denmark by his Dad as a kid, a Danish interviewer talking to Kitson discovered he was driven to denmark by his Dad. There are loads of parellels , he was never going to get away with it forever.