Torquay United Football Club

A Message from Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett, followed by Torquay United Football Club's best practice article

The ability to listen and learn from one another has always been vital in parliament, in business and in most aspects of daily life. But at this particular moment in time, as national and global events continue to reiterate, it is uncommonly crucial that we forge new channels of communication and reinforce existing ones. The following article from Torquay United Football Club is an attempt to do just that. We would welcome your thoughts on this or any other Parliamentary Review article.

Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett

Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles

www.torquayunited.com

1TORQUAY UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB |

MAGAZINE EDITION

Clarke Osborne, Chairman

The view of Bristow’s Bench,

Torquay United’s main

grandstand

Following relegation from the National League at the end of

the 2017/18 season, Torquay United now compete in the

National League South, the sixth tier of English football.

Since then, the club has seen its fair share of excitement, but

looks now at achieving a central goal: regaining its status as one

of the 92 clubs that competes in the prestigious English Football

League. Chairman Clarke Osborne here discusses where

Torquay United are now, where the club and its supporters

want to be and how they plan on getting there.

We were first elected to the Football League in 1920, and have subsequently

played across a number of tiers in English football. Our latest promotion to the

third tier, now known as League One, was in 2004. In 2009, we beat Cambridge

United at Wembley to win the National League play-off final and return to the

Football League. Though we have never quite reached the second tier, now the

Championship, we hope to soon return to the fourth tier of English league football.

A community of local fans

One of the things that makes us so unique as a club is our geography. In the

southwest, there are only three football clubs competing in the fifth tier or above:

Plymouth Argyle, Exeter City and Torquay United. Other regions of the country –

such as London and the North West – are saturated with a variety of sometimes

dozens of different clubs. For them, a local derby match can be only 15 minutes

away; for us, it can be up to 150 miles.

FACTS ABOUT

TORQUAY UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB

»Chairman: Clarke Osborne

»Established in 1899

»Based in Torquay, Devon

»Services: Association football

club competing in the

Conference South

»No. of employees: 55

»Stadium capacity: 6,200

»Strong cohort of between 200

and 400 dedicated away fans

»Beat Cambridge United 2-0 at

Wembley to secure promotion

back to the Football League in

the 2008/09 season

»www.torquayunited.com

Torquay United

Football Club

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW

Highlighting best practice

2| TORQUAY UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB

This really does resonate with what

makes us so special: we are, at heart,

a family club, and our vocal, tight-knit

community of fans includes a seriously

dedicated number of away supporters.

The distances that sometimes between

200 and 400 people travel for the level

we compete at is genuinely incredible.

Honesty, hospitality and hard

work

Our staff’s work ethic and honesty, both

on and off the pitch, is unique and very

special. While this might be the basis

of any given business, it is something

at the forefront of our club. With the

return of two major staff members,

general manager Geoff Harrop and club

secretary Tim Herbert, at the beginning

of 2017, the attitude at our club is

demonstrably one that keeps people

coming back. Even through the last four

years, where we have struggled, there

has been an honesty about everybody

involved withTorquay.

Torquay is a town with an extensive

history and a great deal of folklore

concerning its hospitality; this is

something that undoubtedly extends

to the club. When players move down

here, we look after them. This is true

for current and previous managerial

staff too; the transition to a new

town is always difficult, but we want

to make it as smooth and as easy

aspossible.

This is all true for supporters, home

and away. We want everyone to enjoy

their time at Torquay United, and we

don’t want to have to shout from the

rooftops about it. We have a good

hospitality program; offering a positive

experience and an overhauled visual

representation of the club are things

we are always working on.

Overhauling everything

Our club shop has been totally

reorganised. Our kit is now all Nike

branded – something that local kids

recognise and want to wear. Trying to

achieve newfound excellence in every

aspect of the club’s management means

working on these smaller things as well,

and using a top brand for ourstrip.

Alongside this, we have relaunched

our football development programme.

Premier League clubs say this takes

ten years – we want to see it achieved

within two or three. Local supporters

have expressed a desire to see young,

home-grown players on the pitch in

a Torquay strip. This means working

tirelessly with nearby schools to get the

talent and players we want.

Refurbishment has not just been limited

to merchandise and our academy,

however. We have seen recent upgrade

to our hospitality capability and are

preparing to bring the pub next to

our ground back under the club’s

jurisdiction, alongside a complete

rework of all marketing and branding.

Our website has been redeveloped with

a view to improving the communication

process with supporters.

Tim Sills celebrating

the winning goal in the

play-off final against

Cambridge United at

Wembley

We want

everyone to

enjoy their

time at

Torquay

United

“

MAGAZINE EDITION

3TORQUAY UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB |

Scouts and supporters

Our scouting process is much

stronger than it has been historically.

In order to find good players, you

need to have good scouts; and the

more people who are out there

scouting that the management can

trust, the more intelligence you can

receive. Before long, this process

starts to pay dividends, and you can

discover the players who are going

to be most appropriate to your style.

Behind the scenes, we are investing

further in the training process and

facilities – the grounds, gymnasium

and everything else that comes along

with a professional club, even at

ourlevel.

Younger and more suitable players

are just one thing to work on,

however. We want to change as the

demographic of football supporters

is changing nationally, and appeal to

a far younger audience. Our official

supporters club now has members

as young as three and four years old,

and we are making use of stickers,

rucksacks and t-shirts. We want to

create the fan of the future through a

weekly Saturday habit.

Setting our own targets

Though the last five years have been

challenging for the club in a number

of respects, the challenges we want to

focus on are the ones we’re setting for

ourselves. This includes a program to

move from our existing ground to a new

stadium on another site, where we will

develop a capacity not just for football,

but also to accommodate events,

supporting leisure and possibly a hotel.

Our current stadium has a capacity

of 6,200; the new site will start by

supporting 7,500, while also being

expandable in the future for up to

20,000. The club infrastructure will allow

us to operate every day of the week in a

leisure capacity, with the premises being

used, one way or another, every single

day. Physically building an academy and

training ground will further challenge us.

All of this, however, is about moving

towards league results. At the

beginning of the 2020/21 season, or

the following season, at the absolute

latest, we want to see Torquay United

return to the English Football League,

with a fully functional academy and a

new stadium on the horizon.

We want to

appeal to a

younger

audience

“

The Yellow Army

www.torquayunited.com

This article was sponsored by Torquay United Football Club. The Parliamentary Review is wholly funded by the representatives who write for it. The publication in which this article originally appeared contained the following foreword from The Rt Hon Theresa May MP.

The Rt Hon Theresa May MP's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By The Rt Hon Theresa May MP

This foreword from the then Prime Minister appeared in the 2018/19 Parliamentary Review.

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review. For Her Majesty’s Government, our task in the year ahead is clear: to achieve the best Brexit deal for Britain and to carry on our work to build a more prosperous and united country – one that truly works for everyone.

The right Brexit deal will not be sufficient on its own to secure a more prosperous future for Britain. We also need to ensure that our economy is ready for what tomorrow will bring. Our Modern Industrial Strategy is our plan to do that. It means Government stepping up to secure the foundations of our productivity: providing an education system that delivers the skills our economy needs, improving school standards and transforming technical education; delivering infrastructure for growth; ensuring people have the homes they need in the places they want to live. It is all about taking action for the long-term that will pay dividends in the future.

But it also goes beyond that. Government, the private sector and academia working together as strategic partners achieve far more than we could separately. That is why we have set an ambitious goal of lifting UK public and private research and development investment to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027. It is why we are developing four Grand Challenges, the big drivers of social and economic change in the world today: harnessing artificial intelligence and the data revolution; leading in changes to the future of mobility; meeting the challenges of our ageing society; and driving ahead the revolution in clean growth. By focusing our efforts on making the most of these areas of enormous potential, we can develop new exports, grow new industries and create more good jobs in every part of our country.

Years of hard work and sacrifice from the British people have got our deficit down by over three quarters. We are building on this success by taking a balanced approach to public spending. We are continuing to deal with our debts, so that our economy can remain strong and we can protect people’s jobs, and at the same time we are investing in vital public services, like our NHS. We have set out plans to increase NHS funding annually by an average by 3.4 percent in real terms: that is £394 million a week more. In return, the NHS will produce a ten-year plan, led by doctors and nurses, to eliminate waste and improve patient care.

I believe that Britain can look to the future with confidence. We are leaving the EU and setting a new course for prosperity as a global trading nation. We have a Modern Industrial Strategy that is strengthening the foundations of our economy and helping us to seize the opportunities of the future. We are investing in the public services we all rely on and helping them to grow and improve. Building on our country’s great strengths – our world-class universities and researchers, our excellent services sector, our cutting edge manufacturers, our vibrant creative industries, our dedicated public servants – we can look towards a new decade that is ripe with possibility. The government I lead is doing all it can to make that brighter future a reality for everyone in our country.

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review

The Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Prime Minister