Please don't kick me

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

Attendance 37k for a friendly ?...

A friendly against possibly the most iconic team in history, from the most glamorous footballing nation in the world, which featured three or four of it's greatest ever players, including a man who at the time was generally regarded as the greatest player who ever lived. In those circumstances Plainmoor would have had 37k if they could have found room for them all.

Quote :

...Sleeping Giant or what !

Plymouth Argyle average attendance 1972-73...

...9'057.

28'000 giant sleeping plastics, more like.

And how many of your plastics went to Old Trafford in 2005, but weren't so keen on watching your 6th place Conference season?

So we can add logic and banter to arithmetic as not your strong suits then.

Your premise suggests some 50% of our support is plastic whereas by comparison 75% of your's deserves that accolade, you sure that makes the point you wanted to ?

You can dress it up all you like LT, but the truth is you've probably got more anal warts than City have season ticket holders. You laugh at 8 seasons in the Championship when it's blindingly obvious that you would give the six toes on your right foot for one season there yourself

I don't know the answer to my earlier question, nor do you I expect, but it will be something like 10-12,000 going to Old Trafford and about 2-3,000 going to Sid James Park regularly.

We might be in a bit of a pickle at the moment but we all know it's a blip and we will recover, whereas you are enjoying the zenith of your entire history in the same 5 year period, and you're still in Division 4 with us.

We might be under achievers but your lot are never have and never will be achievers, and that hurts you so much that like Nool on Exeweb you feel the need to get your digs in now while you can. It's ok though, we don't mind and I'm used to it myself with Scotland, but it really does help to get it off your chest and admit your enviousness towards your better looking, more intelligent, but less toed neighbours

Tringreen wrote:

Good to see you softening your stance a tad, Tis

I've to wage a lonely campaign on here up until Saturday, then I suspect things will take a turn one way or the other leaving me free to slip back into smug, superior but deferential mode or to skulk away with me tail suitably sited.

Greenjock wrote:

admit your enviousness towards your better looking, more intelligent neighbours

I could get with most of that but better looking and more intelligent, Swillyites ?

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

admit your enviousness towards your better looking, more intelligent neighbours

I could get with most of that but better looking and more intelligent, Swillyites ?

He does have a point Although those characters only have a reading age and IQ sufficient to frequent Pasoti.

I see that 'new member' Don't Panic, on the farm has had plenty to say this weekend after 'just looking in' for years.
If he isn't a multi, I'll eat my 84 semi final hat !

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Greenjock wrote:

[... how many of your plastics went to Old Trafford in 2005, but weren't so keen on watching your 6th place Conference season?

Loads. We're a small, historically unsuccessful club, hamstrung by our location, as you are a medium-sized, historically unsuccessful club, in an even worse location. That really doesn't bother me greatly - if it did I'd take Turncoat Jones' advice. I certainly don't go around making bogus comparisons with other clubs, or resort to wedging quite ludicrous statistical comparisons in with a crowbar, simply in order to make the facts fit a theory about some claimed "potential" which has never surfaced in over a hundred years. As the excellent Guardian journalist, David Conn, wrote when reporting about your troubles and the Fans Reunited thing, the phrase "massive potential catchment area" is just another way of saying "miles from anywhere else".

I try to accept the realities of the modern game - which is that radical change is already underway and that it is a fool's errand for all but the biggest clubs, or those who've scrambled aboard the gravy train already, to dream of the heights (although those heights would probably be my idea of a nightmare). It's certainly dumb to dream of a rich man making all my troubles go away when that will almost certainly come with the sort of strings attached that are likely to strangle me in the long run if I'm not bleddy careful.

The Trust needs to get its act together in certain ways, but in principle I'm far more proud of being part of a supporter-owned club than I would ever be of getting so-called success that is bought and paid for by someone else; especially when that success is bought by the sort of odious scumbags who invariably tend to be the types making off with the kind of loot necessary to buy an unearned place in the Premier League these days. You see, what my football club stands for is more important to me than crowing about being in the this or that division. I could never enjoy watching my Club in the PL, knowing that the Russian Mafia man who bought that experience for me, paid for it with money looted from state assets, thereby impoverishing his fellow citizens to the extent that their life expectancy has gone down by a decade; or that my friendly-neighborhood oil sheik is accused of torturing innocent people in one of his jails, while he buys us Carlos Tevez with his people's oil wealth. Quaint and naive maybe, but there you go. If we ever go that extra mile to the Championship, it will be so much better to know that we've pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps.

As I always say, there's more to a football club than league position. Hopefully some of you already realise this. Maybe in time the rest will be able to shed this almost scary, pathological obsession with getting to the top flight that seems so overwhelming among PAFC fans. If you don't I suspect you may find yourself led by the nose down the garden path by many more MacAuleys, Stapletons, Suroys and Brents.

Tringreen wrote:

Historically, before the other clubs achieved top flight status and cemented their 20k fanbases, our attendance figures were on a par with the likes of Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton...

But this is a pointless argument. The fact is that they reached the top flight, you didn't and your core fanbase is never likely to be anything like theirs ever again. To argue what might have been is an amusing parlour game, but ultimately it's an exercise in the pointless discipline of counter-factual history. Anyway, you have to go back to around 1960 to find a time when you got 20k anything like consistently. That's FIFTY-THREE YEARS AGO. How far back do you want to go? Most people attending matches back then are probably dead now.

We're talking about a different universe in those days - the whole social, cultural and economic landscape was vastly different, as was the entire basis of league competition. In those days the FA deliberately encouraged measures to ensure equal competition among all 92 clubs - the Maximum Wage and Tied Contracts. It's interesting to look at the attendances and success of certain clubs like ours after the Maximum Wage had been abolished and the George Eastham case began the move away from tied contracts that ended with Bosman and Freedom-Of-Contract. There is a very rough downward trend that you can see, which I believe partly has something to do with the fact that some clubs' natural disadvantages were masked to some degree by the artificially levelled playing field. Of course you should also consider the fact that even when the playing field was far more level, you still never managed to get to the top flight.

By the rationale of taking what counts as footballing ancient history into consideration, Corinthian Casuals are a sleeping giant, just waiting to regain their place as a major club; Lancashire Cricket club just need the right owner to take them back to the days when 50'000 watched a roses match in the County Championship; and the popularity of baseball in prewar England means that Baseball is a "sleeping giant sport" just waiting to regain the 10'000 crowds it once enjoyed.

The implications for international relations are even more staggering - Turkey is surely just waiting for the right moment to regain its rightful place as a world superpower; as are Austria, Hungary and Portugal. Soon we will once again be looking to Belgium as one of the world's economic powerhouses as it was at the outbreak of the Great War and Japan can look forward to kicking the Russian Navy's backside.

I'm sorry Tring - it's just a nonsensical argument

Quote :

.... and double that of ECFC.

But why are you comparing yourself to us? Most of us know we're small (don't believe what you read on Exeweb). In any case doesn't the fact that we averaged around 10'000 for a fair few years until the mid-late fifties further demonstrate how bogus your argument is? I don't expect to see us averaging 10,000 again on a regular basis any time soon (even if we could find room) any more than I expect to see you consistently averaging 20'000 - or even 15'000.

Quote :

Our first season back in the Championship saw gates of circa 17k, larger than corresponding results for Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol City, Reading etc.

Cardiff and Bristol City? The major team from the capital of an entire nation and the top team from the only genuinely big city bar London in the South of England - both clubs being from cities that are larger, far less isolated, far better connected to the rest of the country, more prosperous and more important in a national context? Are you seriously comparing Plymouth Argyle to them on the basis of a season that is a complete aberration when viewed in any sort of context? Wow - just wow. (I'll leave aside the fact that when you were regularly getting 20k in the fifties Cardiff were achieving attendances in the 30k region).

This whole attendance thing is largely overstated anyway. Unless you believe that you are somehow going to magic up something to compare to the really huge attendances then the 15 and 20ks of this world are never going to be a game-changer in the face of some of the cash available to other clubs in the Championship. The parachute payments are going up as well as the TV contract, which means that from next year, the relegated clubs will be pocketing around £80 million before they ever kick a ball in the 2nd tier.

On top of that you have all sorts of factors - the cachet/reputation of a club or city, its economics and demographics, it's isolation, the strength of the football culture in the region and so on. In most cases the clubs that PAFC fans keep comparing themselves with have more of these factors in their favour. I couldn't believe what I was reading when someone compared PAFC to Brighton. For one thing the population element of the comparison was an example of the use of a doubly bogus population comparison - the City is Brighton AND HOVE - i.e Brighton and Hove are constituents parts of the city in the way Buda and Pest are part of Budapest. Even if you just compare the artificial boundaries of Brighton and Hove and Plymouth the former is bigger; if you compare the Urban Area it's nearly twice the size. That's notwithstanding the fact that Brighton is possibly one of the premier cities of its size in the country - talk about a place being full of the minted, comfortable middle-class and movers and shakers who want to get away from London. It's not nicknamed "London-On-Sea" for nothing. I'm afraid that there is no favourable comparison between Brighton and Hove and Plymouth except in the minds of the most partisan of Plymothians.

Any attendance comparison is meaningless, because of the status of Brighton fans as the second most sh*t on in Football League history. Not only did they have to endure the abomination of the Withdean, as my curmudgeonly Grecian friend pointed out, but they also had to spend two seasons playing 70 miles away in the hell-hole that is Gillingham - a town with no direct rail links to Brighton as far as I know. If you look at the Goldstone ground era their attendances were at least equal to yours and often significantly better. When you were both in the 2nd tier in the late Seventies they had better, or much better attendances and even had a 14k and 17k in the third tier in the early seventies, something you haven't really come close to.

Even Reading, which was a bit of a tip at one time, is getting more affluent, with a nice bit of regeneration having taken place in the city centre (although curiously some of the tattier areas are also close to the centre). You can see some serious money going into some of the houses being built on the bank of the Thames and so on. Again it's significantly bigger than Plymouth - the arbitrary city population doesn't show this, because for one thing I believe part of Reading proper comes under Wokingham council now, but the Urban Area has over 100'000 more citizens than you do. Of course in terms of location it's chalk and cheese - close enough to London, great rail links to London and the West and so on.

If you try and look at various clubs and cities in context there are often underlying lessons. Cardiff and Bristol have never yet played in the Premier League in twenty-odd years of trying and only rarely in the top flight full stop, despite their natural advantages over yourselves. One reason that has often been cited is the fact that rugby is big in both regions and football correspondingly less so. Ring any bells?

Reading and Cardiff have both only got anywhere close to the Premier League because of minted owners - in the case of Madejski he was able to raise them to a competitive level in the Championship on around £40m spent in ten or fifteen years, of which £25m went on the stadium. If he were to start the project next year, he would not only be up against clubs awash with ex-PL money and parachute payments but also the minted owners that can be found in at least half the other clubs, if not more. For example, the likes of the super-rich Egyptian owners of Hull, who've put £50m pounds into the club in TWO YEARS, as well as the likes of Watford, owned by minted Italians, who already own two other top-flight clubs in Spain and Italy and are using a loophole in loan regulations to effectively turn Watford into a finishing school for elite young players from Udinese and Granada. Don't you remember Holloway complaining that the system was wrong and that some of their players who had beaten his Palace side were "among the very best I've ever seen at that age"? All this without including bigger clubs than yourselves like Leeds, Wednesday, Ipswich and Wolves.

It's getting to the point where mere money is not enough - you need mega money. You should note that Madejski, even though he is worth £200 million, was losing significant money with Reading and turned to the young Russian who heads TSI because Reading needed more money to sustain themselves in the Premier League. (In reality the young Russian owner is being backed by daddy, who controls the paper producing industry in Russia.)

Of the 24 clubs in the npower Championship, 23 have already played in the top flight and 21 have played in the Premier League - Millwall missed out on a Premier League place in the playoffs (and of course they're in London). Most have played in the top flight multiple times and have a better modern history in the 2nd tier than you do. The only incontrovertibly less successful club than you is Peterborough United, who have only been a League club since 1960 - and they matched your tenth place in your so-called promotion season only ten years before.

I'm not trying to do you down. However I just cannot see how, in the modern era, you are ever going to find the money and overcome the advantages most of the clubs in the second tier are always likely to have from now on. It's a shame that you pin all your hopes on the mythical aim of the top flight. Dreams are good things, but when they become a crutch rather than an inspiration, they turn into obsessions - and obsessions are always damaging.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

[... how many of your plastics went to Old Trafford in 2005, but weren't so keen on watching your 6th place Conference season?

Loads. We're a small, historically unsuccessful club, hamstrung by our location, as you are a medium-sized, historically unsuccessful club, in an even worse location. That really doesn't bother me greatly - if it did I'd take Turncoat Jones' advice. I certainly don't go around making bogus comparisons with other clubs, or resort to wedging quite ludicrous statistical comparisons in with a crowbar, simply in order to make the facts fit a theory about some claimed "potential" which has never surfaced in over a hundred years. As the excellent Guardian journalist, David Conn, wrote when reporting about your troubles and the Fans Reunited thing, the phrase "massive potential catchment area" is just another way of saying "miles from anywhere else".

I try to accept the realities of the modern game - which is that radical change is already underway and that it is a fool's errand for all but the biggest clubs, or those who've scrambled aboard the gravy train already, to dream of the heights (although those heights would probably be my idea of a nightmare). It's certainly dumb to dream of a rich man making all my troubles go away when that will almost certainly come with the sort of strings attached that are likely to strangle me in the long run if I'm not bleddy careful.

The Trust needs to get its act together in certain ways, but in principle I'm far more proud of being part of a supporter-owned club than I would ever be of getting so-called success that is bought and paid for by someone else; especially when that success is bought by the sort of odious scumbags who invariably tend to be the types making off with the kind of loot necessary to buy an unearned place in the Premier League these days. You see, what my football club stands for is more important to me than crowing about being in the this or that division. I could never enjoy watching my Club in the PL, knowing that the Russian Mafia man who bought that experience for me, paid for it with money looted from state assets, thereby impoverishing his fellow citizens to the extent that their life expectancy has gone down by a decade; or that my friendly-neighborhood oil sheik is accused of torturing innocent people in one of his jails, while he buys us Carlos Tevez with his people's oil wealth. Quaint and naive maybe, but there you go. If we ever go that extra mile to the Championship, it will be so much better to know that we've pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps.

As I always say, there's more to a football club than league position. Hopefully some of you already realise this. Maybe in time the rest will be able to shed this almost scary, pathological obsession with getting to the top flight that seems so overwhelming among PAFC fans. If you don't I suspect you may find yourself led by the nose down the garden path by many more MacAuleys, Stapletons, Suroys and Brents.

Jabba I was only slapping Lord Tisdale down a bit for his continued obsession about Argyle. I think he's a little worried about Saturday the poor lamb

I don't see why he's so worried really when we're piss poor and you're high-flying and with a much better away record than we have a home record

Years ago I was amongst thousands of Argyle fans at Highbury when we lost to the then best team in England 6-1. Estimates of how many Argyle fans were there range from between 10-15,000 but whatever the actual figure was it definitely caught Arsenal on the hop and they had to open up more of the Clock End for us and have just a small fence between the segregated fans which was useless as it was only about waist high and you could shake hands with the Arsenal fans, which is what many of them wanted to do after the game as they were extremely impressed with our turnout and the way we outsong them the whole match despite getting a right pasting.

My point is that the week before we were at home to Grimsby in front of around 10,000 yet took more than that for an away game in London. Shit like that happens all the time and means nothing. I started a thread about Gillingham supplying the 28 Accrington fans with free pies on Saturday for making the long journey in such adverse weather conditions. To me those 28 Accrington fans are more deserving of praise than any other fans last week.

You are right about us being habitual under performers, and that everyone trots out the same line about potential and catchment area etc, when the truth is that when we were in the Championship last time and sitting about where you are now in the league, we only managed gates of around 16-17,000 when we were really riding the crest of a wave.

I do feel though that if the new stand is done properly making a capacity of over 20,000 we will eventually see the sold out signs displayed. People will come to see the new facilities and there are obviously more than 20,000 floating fans in and around Plymouth. I would say that if we survive the drop this season and the right investment is made in the playing and coaching side, that we could be challenging for promotion next season and allied to a super shiny new stand that people will want to see, crowds of around the capacity will happen, towards the end of the season and at Christmas and Easter.

Then, again a big if, League 1 gates should be higher to start off with and again given a fair wind and some good results, I know for sure that 20,000 is easily achievable if only for half a dozen games or so.

This has a tremendous knock on effect too. There is nothing like a winning team to bring the fans out of the woodwork. 9 years ago I started seeing the usually few empty spaces slowly filling up as the season went on and remember that this again was following the re-development of the ground. Previously for half a season or so in League 2 parts of the ground were under construction and not available to use, so given the upturn in form and the fact that the new parts of the stadium were open for all, crowds automatically increased.

The victory over QPR which guaranteed prmotion to the Championship again saw a sold out Home Park of around 20k and thousands more wanted tickets. Then on our final home game of the season against Cheltenham, the sold out signs were again up and I couldn't get a ticket myself. Not ever being a season ticket holder meant that it was my own fault I suppose, but I think you get my point. I'd been to around 25 games home and away that season but because there is a large potential fanbase the glory games sold out.

Peopel who I hadn't known go to Argyle for at least 10 years, if at all, were suddenly huge Argyle fans. Does that make them plastics or not a praaaper fan? I don't know, but do you think the club cared who the fans were inside the ground? Of course not. Everybody's £20 is the same to the club.

These floating fans are the first to stop going when results dip though, or when it's home to Peterborough or Scunthorpe instead of Wolves and West Ham! And that is just how it goes.

Probably one of the reasons why Newell and the gang don't mind what the capacity of the ground will be is that they will get a seat whatever happens. Ian Newell whether he was a season ticket holder or not would not go short of a ticket if we drew Chelsea in the cup! Therefore who gives a feck what the capacity of the stand is? Well me for one. Even if I couldn't get a ticket myself I would rather know that Argyle are getting big crowds which can only help the club long term, and that is my major gripe with the proposed stand, along with what looks like a severe case of backtracking on what else will be incorporated in the development and who it directly benefits.

So it doesn't make us any better or worse than yourselves having larger crowds, as we're about 18 places below you in the table, but I do think it gives us a much better chance of being more successful in the long run, as long as we don't go down this year of course

The plastics point raised by LT about the Santos game is fair enough but again do you think Argyle gave a toss who the fans were in amongst the 37,000? Again of course not. And do you blame anyone going to see probably the greatest footballer of all time? I don't. If Lionel Messi rocked up for a friendly against Southend with Barcelona this year it would guarantee a sell-out crowd whatever Roots Hall holds. And they are on the verge of moving to a new stadium which if they did play Barcelona in a friendly would guarantee bigger gates afterwards because of the new stadium and because fathers who took their sons to see the great Messi and co would have their interest in Southend re-ignited, and hopefully a new fan for life in their son, that's how supporting a club goes.

Again with that principle I would think that the extra attendance the new stand would attract, which it would just out of curiousity alone, would include some children who will become hooked and want to go every weeek, which gives the parents a great excuse to be turning up regularly again. It doesn't matter in the gate figure if it's adults or children, it's a case of how many people come through the turnstiles, but attracting the kids before they swear allegiance to Liverpool or United is the key. There is nothing like live football. You can watch all the premier league games you want but it cannot compete with the noise, colour and atmosphere that is created at a game you attend.

If James Brent and his family really have got the bug I would hope that he would understand this principle. If he sells Argyle in 3 years time after we get promoted I would like to think that he would be an Argyle fan for life along with his kids, but that depends on where his priorities lie

City are woorried about our potential, why else would their fans waste hours of their time telling us why we are so insignificant?
FOOKIN HUGE WE ARE.

Iggy wrote:

City are woorried about our potential, why else would their fans waste hours of their time telling us why we are so insignificant?
FOOKIN HUGE WE ARE.

Iggy, size does matter...ask my wife!

Sleeping giant....wake up Argyle, wake up, anyone would think you are in a coma...has anyone seen this giant awake.....nobody, ever.

Massive potential....we all have massive potential, the truth is Plymouth realised its potential 200 years ago and since has only fallen backwards in everything...sorry if it hurts bit it is true. The Club is a reflection of the change in society, a reflection of the lack of employment, lack of council forward thinking, lack of desire to move with the times. The City blitzed by the Germans was rebuilt with concrete and no real thought, people move out and work elsewhere...your Club has been easy pickings for the conmen, those without knowledge or money and now you have been sold out by the feeble minded "Janner types" like Webb and Newell.

The City itself is in coma, the Club is in a coma....you wake the Club up and what will you have....a Club still dreaming of the "glory"
days of nearly Premiership football, yet the body will still be at rest.

As for Exeter City, we aint going bust, we will tick on and in truth that is all I care about. I prefer supporting a team that wins feck all, because I was born here. The City itself has changed and is changing further, houses, business expansion, redevelopment everywhere, jobs everywhere, new big companies everywhere...ours days as a Roman City have long since gone, yet we no longer harp back to those halcyon days of victories in the arena where Cornish savages were ripped apart by ISCA natives. It is all an irrelevance.

The only relevance to me is on Saturday, (when the new breed of Exonian can be seen in their pressed chinos, walking serenely, heads held high, fresh notes in pockets, from the delapidated railway station, through the unclean streets of despair, past unkempt urchins wearing primark thirds 'shouting an a hollering', on to the windswept lego built monstrosity, onwards we go, unfazed by the ugly hairless Plymouthian men and even uglier hursuit Janner women appearing from a tinpot "fanfest", dewdnies spilling from their yellow stained gapped mouths) we play you off the park, outsing you and take 3 points back to Devon's Capital City.....where we can enjoy a hot bath a hot meal and more hot sex.

See you Saturday

PS> I can write all this in jest because this is a forum with free thinking, intelligent people...I could not on Pasoti because I too was banned after 2 posts. They be thik they be. As for walking from the station....I will be driving and wearing jeans.

Chinos? Really? Is that because they're piss and shit resistant? You surely wouldn't wear them for any other reason.

Greenjock wrote:

Chinos? Really? Is that because they're piss and shit resistant? You surely wouldn't wear them for any other reason.

Jock, we seem to be labelled chino wearers so I thought I would comply to the stereotypical City fan, but only in word form

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

Jabba's & Red Star's posts are so compelling that I'm thinking of becoming a Red. Their posts are intelligent, informed and expanded on in a lively rivetting fashion. They are a credit to ATD and ATD is a credit to football sites when we can accept such lonely people with such a warm welcome. What a wonderful club Exeter are!

Nah!

Not when you see their first team in training.

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or the occasion when their capacity crowd invaded the pitch.

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or the man who took care of their youngsters

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Just banter....

That's an old picture of their first team- this is the current ecfc squad training-

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Chemical Ali wrote:

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

We have a Waitrose.

We have Lidls and Aldi's too but they are only open during the hours of darkness. We also have 2 Chinese Supermarkets and a Polish one, although not sure what they are called, all I do know is the number of stray dogs has declined and horses now clop gingerly in the area

Knecht...good spots mate. Fecking Jackson and Geller...can't you forgive us these aborations. Father Christmas spooks me out.

10 years ago all you would see would be Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal tops on kids at football events. Our football in the Community is supported all over the City and kids wear City tops more than premiership tops, although Chiefs shirts are now in the majority.

Chemical Ali wrote:

That's an old picture of their first team- this is the current ecfc squad training-

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Actually they look faster than our front line

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to your pre-match entertainment here at St Jimmy's Park. That was "Walls come tumbling down" by the Style Council. Next up are our very own Exeter born and interbred cheerleading troupe.....please welcome The Greedy Greeks





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The Red Star wrote:

Chemical Ali wrote:

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

We have a Waitrose.

We have Lidls and Aldi's too but they are only open during the hours of darkness. We also have 2 Chinese Supermarkets and a Polish one, although not sure what they are called, all I do know is the number of stray dogs has declined and horses now clop gingerly in the area

Knecht...good spots mate. Fecking Jackson and Geller...can't you forgive us these aborations. Father Christmas spooks me out.

10 years ago all you would see would be Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal tops on kids at football events. Our football in the Community is supported all over the City and kids wear City tops more than premiership tops, although Chiefs shirts are now in the majority.

Joking aside this is a really good thing. If you can snare the youngsters early enough, and not in a Josef Fritzl way Hooper, then you have the future support. Argyle have just been awarded the League 2 family club of the year award despite the best efforts of Jones and a few others trying to deter large numbers of Argyle fans from continuing to support the club along with their offspring. It does seem that only the children of the superfans are required these days. I won't name names or I'll have a white feather sent to me.

As it happens I really like the family zone at Home Park idea, but the location is baffling. Placing families between home and away fans is an extraordinary move and means that this Saturdays game, which maybe the highest crowd of the season at Home Park and one of the largest crowds League 2 will see all year, could be limited by leaving the usual family area vacant along with the usual segregation area.

I maybe wrong at it will be open to home fans but I can't see that happening.

The Red Star wrote:

Iggy wrote:

City are woorried about our potential, why else would their fans waste hours of their time telling us why we are so insignificant?
FOOKIN HUGE WE ARE.

Iggy, size does matter...ask my wife!

Sleeping giant....wake up Argyle, wake up, anyone would think you are in a coma...has anyone seen this giant awake.....nobody, ever.

Massive potential....we all have massive potential, the truth is Plymouth realised its potential 200 years ago and since has only fallen backwards in everything...sorry if it hurts bit it is true. The Club is a reflection of the change in society, a reflection of the lack of employment, lack of council forward thinking, lack of desire to move with the times. The City blitzed by the Germans was rebuilt with concrete and no real thought, people move out and work elsewhere...your Club has been easy pickings for the conmen, those without knowledge or money and now you have been sold out by the feeble minded "Janner types" like Webb and Newell.

The City itself is in coma, the Club is in a coma....you wake the Club up and what will you have....a Club still dreaming of the "glory"
days of nearly Premiership football, yet the body will still be at rest.

As for Exeter City, we aint going bust, we will tick on and in truth that is all I care about. I prefer supporting a team that wins feck all, because I was born here. The City itself has changed and is changing further, houses, business expansion, redevelopment everywhere, jobs everywhere, new big companies everywhere...ours days as a Roman City have long since gone, yet we no longer harp back to those halcyon days of victories in the arena where Cornish savages were ripped apart by ISCA natives. It is all an irrelevance.

The only relevance to me is on Saturday, (when the new breed of Exonian can be seen in their pressed chinos, walking serenely, heads held high, fresh notes in pockets, from the delapidated railway station, through the unclean streets of despair, past unkempt urchins wearing primark thirds 'shouting an a hollering', on to the windswept lego built monstrosity, onwards we go, unfazed by the ugly hairless Plymouthian men and even uglier hursuit Janner women appearing from a tinpot "fanfest", dewdnies spilling from their yellow stained gapped mouths) we play you off the park, outsing you and take 3 points back to Devon's Capital City.....where we can enjoy a hot bath a hot meal and more hot sex.

See you Saturday

PS> I can write all this in jest because this is a forum with free thinking, intelligent people...I could not on Pasoti because I too was banned after 2 posts. They be thik they be. As for walking from the station....I will be driving and wearing jeans.

You're wasting your time though, at most I only read the first line of anything as long as this, tight lines.

Bleds hell, took a while to read through that lot, fortunately being blessed with a slightly longer attention span than the Iggster I gleaned some enjoyment from the process.

Plassies don't bother me near half as much as I make out, a fair majority of the legions that went to OT were old hands that had simply fallen out of the habit, a lump of women and kids who were on the day out and a fair few proper exiles who flew half way around the world to be part of the single event which more than any other saved the club.

The only thing that really bothers me about Saturday is the thought of Brent's beady little eyes getting even beadier as he rubs his uncalloused, never a done a days real work in his life, hands together while he ponders how to spend his 100k plus windfall, my guess he wont be rushing to slip it into the back pockets of those who worked for nothing to keep the club alive.

Win lose or draw Saturday we shall still be Champions of Devon for a third year running and v likely still with a post season to savour come May.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Bleds hell, took a while to read through that lot, fortunately being blessed with a slightly longer attention span than the Iggster I gleaned some enjoyment from the process.

.

Cheers mate....verbose is my middle name

If the rugby team up there continues to thrive, which looks odds-on, that'll be probably the biggest factor in the football team being perrenial 4th/5th tier bottom feeders (with the odd nosebleed in div3) to an even bigger degree in years to come. There just isn't the head of population to sustain a decent rugby team, and anything other than what you've had so far.

If Argyle were ever to properly lose fans permanently to Albion, that'd be demoralisation personified...

Czarcasm wrote:

If the rugby team up there continues to thrive, which looks odds-on, that'll be probably the biggest factor in the football team being perrenial 4th/5th tier bottom feeders (with the odd nosebleed in div3) to an even bigger degree in years to come. There just isn't the head of population to sustain a decent rugby team, and anything other than what you've had so far.

If Argyle were ever to properly lose fans permanently to Albion, that'd be demoralisation personified...

agree czarcs, i have worked in exeter loads of times over the years, yes it is a thriving place no doubt about it, but i can only see the chiefs with their new facilates benefiting ,these wealthy incomers coming to exeter will not set foot into the hovel that is city's ground if they stay at the siddadrome they will just fade away to become the new bath city, i truly believe that.

Sufferedsince68 wrote:

Czarcasm wrote:

If the rugby team up there continues to thrive, which looks odds-on, that'll be probably the biggest factor in the football team being perrenial 4th/5th tier bottom feeders (with the odd nosebleed in div3) to an even bigger degree in years to come. There just isn't the head of population to sustain a decent rugby team, and anything other than what you've had so far.

If Argyle were ever to properly lose fans permanently to Albion, that'd be demoralisation personified...

agree czarcs, i have worked in exeter loads of times over the years, yes it is a thriving place no doubt about it, but i can only see the chiefs with their new facilates benefiting ,these wealthy incomers coming to exeter will not set foot into the hovel that is city's ground if they stay at the siddadrome they will just fade away to become the new bath city, i truly believe that.

Can't disagree with both posts, however Chiefs aren't aimed at Exeter, they aim at Bristol down to Truro. The 20000 stadium approved is based on European Rugby and the change in the City brought about by increased population (15000 at Cranbrook). City will be whatever they already are and I am just happy to support a Club I trust, a Club I want to pay into without fear of a Brent or Newell fecking it up. Bath City have no professional history, City's goes back to 1904. Bath is a nightmare to get to, we have a direct motorway link, international airport and railway hub, not to mention pigeon post and recently tarmac'd drives, without a g*po in sight