The Ultimate Torquay United team: Right-backs

Plainmoor’s chief reporter for over 50 years, Dave Thomas, continues his countdown to the ultimate Torquay United team:

Few positions on the football pitch have changed more than full-back.

Back in the days when they wore Nos 2 and 3, they were part of a 2-3-5 formation and weren’t expected to venture much further forward than the halfway line.

Their job was to defend first, give the ball to their winger every now and then, and let him get on with the business of dribbling and crossing.

They were given a bit more freedom to attack in 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 systems.

And now that 3-5-2 is all the rage they’re called ‘wing-backs’ and they’re expected to gallop up and down the pitch, defending one moment and attacking the next.

It’s a big ask. But the best right-backs in my time watching Torquay United could have played and prospered in any role.

Few epitomised that versatility better than John Bond.

United were halfway through winning promotion to the Third Division (League One) when manager Frank O’Farrell decided to make a ‘statement’ signing in January 1966.

Less than two years earlier Bond had played in First Division West Ham United’s FA Cup winning team, but he’d made nearly 450 appearances for the Hammers and, with the gap in wages a fraction of what they are now, he accepted an offer from his former Upton Park teammate O’Farrell to join him at Plainmoor.

He’d been hugely popular at West Ham and he brought instant star quality to Torquay.

Bond may not have been the quickest, but he was well over 6ft tall, could head and tackle, read the game so well that he could time his attacking forays to perfection and he could shoot as hard as he tackled.

His nickname at Upton Park and Plainmoor was ‘Muffin’, as in the mule. For the next three years, some of the best in the club’s history, he was a huge favourite.

O’Farrell allowed him to continue living in London, train part of most weeks at West Ham.

It was an arrangement which helped to clinch other key ex-Hammer signings, including former England centre-half Ken Brown and left-back Bill Kitchener.

When you entered into that sort of deal with O’Farrell, it was set in stone and Bond broke it only once, before an important home game against Colchester in 1968 as United were trying to win promotion to what’s now the Championship.

O’Farrell wasn’t actually checking up on Bond when he rang John’s wife to sort out a social commitment, only to learn that Bond was still in London when he should have been in Torquay.

He’d actually committed to a charity function, but he hadn’t cleared it with O’Farrell.

Bond drove to Torquay in time to meet the squad, as usual, for their pre-match lunch at a Babbacombe hotel.

He arrived to find that, instead of wearing his customary No.2 shirt, O’Farrell had given him No.11, with Eric Burgess and Bobby Baxter at ‘full-back’.

O’Farrell refused to discuss the matter, even with one of his star players, and ‘left-winger’ Bond was duly ribbed by many in the 10,000 crowd.

He still scored the final goal in a 3-0 victory, and he was in the process of running towards O’Farrell to make his point when he thought better of it!

When Bond later became a successful manager (Bournemouth, Norwich, Manchester City, Burnley) in his own right, he recalled the incident and the lessons he learned from it.

Bond ended up playing 145 games here, scoring 13 mostly spectacular goals.

Having given Torquay so much, United fans found it hard to forgive Bond for exploiting growing financial problems at Plainmoor and buying several of O’Farrell’s fine side for Bournemouth in the early 1970s.

But most of the memories were happy ones.

Ian Twitchin may not have been as talented as Bond, but Gulls fans loved him nonetheless, especially as he was one of their own.

He was a proud son of Teignmouth, from his South Devon accent to the tan he carried from running deckchair concessions in his hometown in the summer.

He was as effective in midfield as he was at right-back, and it was his phenomenal fitness, determination and appetite for the game which made him such an asset.

From his debut at 18 years old in 1970 until his final appearance eleven seasons later he played 435 games, a tally bettered by only three men (Dennis Lewis, Tommy Northcott and Kevin Hill) in the history of the club, and scored 17 goals.

One chapter summed him up.

Early in the 1978-79 season ‘Twitch’ sustained a sufficiently bad ankle injury in a 2-0 midweek win over Halifax at Plainmoor that player-manager Mike Green wrote him off for a trip to Barnsley three days later.

Well aware that there was little, if any, cover for him at right-back, Twitchin threw himself into almost round-the-clock treatment under trainer Mike Hickman and physio Bill Wright and reported for the journey to Yorkshire.

His ankle was strapped as tightly as the muscular Hickman could make it, but even with pain-killers added, Green asked coach John Rudge to keep his eye on Twitchin for an almost inevitable substitution.

Ian proceeded to play his full part in one of United’s best performances of that season, so that Rudge completely forgot to check on him as the Gulls ended Barnsley’s unbeaten start to the season with a 2-1 win in front of more than 13,000 at Oakwell.

Twitchin hobbled back onto the team coach, encased his ankle with more ice for the next four days and then turned out again in a 2-1 home win over Aldershot.

He had only just retired from his gardening business when he died suddenly at the age of only 65, betrayed by the heart which had seemed to make him so indestructible.

He is still talked about affectionately by everyone who knew and loved him.

The cultured Scot Freddie Pethard (1979-82) was equally at home at right or left-back.

He is fondly remembered, and rightly so, by many fans from that era, as was his contemporary, the equally versatile Graham Jones.

Jim McNichol had already achieved heroic status at Plainmoor, for his now-legendary part in United’s first Great Escape from relegation in 1987, when new manager Cyril Knowles watched him (and centre-half John Impey) in a pre-season training session and told them both that he reckoned their legs were gone.

McNichol was 29, Impey 33.

Whether Knowles intended it or not, his remark was like a red rag to two bulls.

Over the course of the next season - at 62 games it the longest in United’s history – McNichol played all 62 and Impey 46.

He was the club’s first proper right wing-back, for Knowles used a 3-5-2 system, with another Glaswegian, Tom Kelly, on the left.

McNichol had followed an apprenticeship at Ipswich Town, during their great days under Bobby Robson, with spells at Luton Town, Brentford and Exeter City, before he moved to Plainmoor in 1986.

Like Bond, he more than made up for any lack of pace by his reading of the game, his quality on the ball and his sheer force of will.

Once Jim set himself to make a tackle or win a header, especially in the opposition goalmouth, you practically had to commit GBH to stop him.

United became deadly at set-pieces, with Phil Lloyd flicking the ball on at the near-post and McNichol often steaming in to finish it.

He was second-top scorer that season with eleven goals, which did include some no-nonsense penalties but also a selection of rousing shots and headers.

McNichol made 162 appearances and scored 19 goals in two spells at Plainmoor.

To this day it slightly irks him that he’s remembered most for that dramatic last-day relegation beating 2-2 draw with Crewe.

It was his goal just after half-time that dragged United back into the match, before Bryn the police dog sank his fangs into Jim’s thigh, creating the injury-time for Paul Dobson’s equaliser.

He deserves to be remembered for much more than that.

Paul Holmes, whom Knowles signed to succeed McNichol, was probably better equipped for the wing-back role than Jim was.

Yorkshireman Holmes was quicker even than the springheeled winger, Paul Smith, who later played in front of him.

He was skilful and a crowd pleaser, which later prompted Birmingham City, Everton and West Bromwich Albion to pay fees totalling £220,000 for him.

Holmes returned for a second spell here, making 269 appearances in all.

Like Twitchin, he passed away far too soon, his death at only 56 earlier this year mourned by fans far beyond Plainmoor.

United’s amazingly successful Youth Training Scheme produced a steady stream of graduates during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Many of them, recruited by scout John James, had been rejected by bigger Midlands clubs, and their characters as well as their talent was forged by the experience of living away from home for the first time.

Most thrived on it, none more so than Chris Curran, who was thrown into the deep end of the 1990-91 promotion battle, including the Play-Off Final victory at Wembley, when he was only 19.

Over the next six years he made 175 appearances in several defensive positions, but he always looked best as an instinctive and determined right-back.

Plymouth Argyle paid £40,000 for him in 1996 and he later spent six years at Exeter City – he was sent off only six minutes into a Devon derby against the Gulls in January 2001!

By then United had been treated to 18 months of a player who has come to epitomise the role of right wing-back – Andy Gurney.

His career was hardly on an upward spiral when manager Kevin Hodges picked him up from Bristol Rovers on a free transfer in the summer of 1997.

Hodges also wanted to play 3-5-2, and he had the men to do it.

From the moment that he scored on the opening day of the season at Macclesfield, Gurney charged up and down United’s right wing, urged on by the formidable Jon Gittens behind him.

He scored ten goals from open play as United reached the Play-Off Final, done 1-0 by a controversial Colchester penalty at Wembley, and halfway through the following season Reading paid £100,000 for him. Enough said.

Brixham’s Steve Tully might well have ended up being another Twitchin-style one-club hero, for he established himself as a spirited and reliable right-back over more than 150 games before Roy McFarland released him in 2002 to make way for the arrival of Lee Canoville from Arsenal.

It was to prove a blessing for Tully, for after a spell at Weymouth, he became an even bigger favourite during six eventful years at Exeter City.

Tully has gone on to a successful career in coaching and non-League management, notably at Truro City and now Poole Town.

Canoville was one of the many quality players signed by McFarland during his all-too-brief one year in charge (2001-2002).

He looked a class act from the day he arrived and, interrupted by injuries, played 121 games over the next four years, including 35 during United’s unforgettable 2003-2004 promotion season under Leroy Rosenior.

For his utter commitment, consistency and readiness to play anywhere anytime, it was hard to beat Gloucester-born Lee Mansell.

Formerly with Luton Town and Oxford United, he more than survived the wreckage of United’s first relegation (2007) from the Football League, becoming a fixture in the side during momentous years under Paul Buckle and Martin Ling, piling up 381 appearances (24gls) before moving on to more success as captain of Bristol Rovers.

Plainmoor supporters have always loved a trier, and been prepared to forgive the odd mistake if they see someone’s made of the right stuff, and for eight years it was almost impossible to imagine a Torquay team without Mansell in it.

Joe Oastler was an effective wing-back under Martin Ling and, during the last few non-League years, ex-Crystal Palace starlet Ben Wynter has probably been the right-back to approach the level of the men who went before him.

Wynter spent four happy years here. Many times he looked capable of stepping back up to the EFL, without ever quite doing it.

And that’s a point worth remembering – it’s one thing having the talent to be a top player, it’s another to have the drive and character to go with it.

Picking one right-back from that little lot? Wish me luck..!

Right-back Shorts

John Bond’s popularity among Torquay United supporters in the Swinging Sixties prompted him to open a newsagents called Bondy’s Tuck Shop.

It was on the corner of Laburnum Row and Teignmouth Road in Torre and, boosted by trade from the old Torquay Technical College, it did very well.

Ian Twitchin’s appetite for hard work knew no bounds, and so was his down-to-earth attitude to life.

When his car failed him, ‘Twitch’ scorned the bus service, ran the eight miles from his home in Teignmouth to Plainmoor, left his teammates behind in training as usual...and then ran home again.

Ever-sharp photographer Paul Levie was on the spot when that police dog bit Jim McNichol on the dramatic last day in 1987.

Urgently pressed by national media for the animal’s name, he was told it was ‘Ginger’, and only when McNichol ‘met’ the dog 48 hours later was his real name ‘Bryn’ confirmed.

Not quite sure how the ‘Ginger Consortium’ would sound today!

Tickets for the Dave Thomas Team of a Lifetime event at Plainmoor on Friday, December 13 are available to purchase from www.torbayweekly.co.uk

Next week: Dave switches defensive flanks to look at the great left-back to wear yellow and blue.