The Ultimate Torquay United team: Centre-Midfield

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

Midfield players are the attacking heart and soul of any team.

When you think that international stars of the game like Bruce Rioch, Eddie Kelly, Tony Currie and Chris Waddle have all played for the Gulls over the last 30 years or so, you realise how tough this is going to be.

Do you go exclusively for technical brilliance? A combination of piano ‘shifter’ and piano ‘player’?

Stalwarts who got stuck in over hundreds of games? Or the grand entertainers who sent you home with a smile on your face, no matter what the result?

I still regret the fact that I never saw Don Mills play for United, though all the fans who did say that he was peerless (367 games/84 goals 1948-62).

The best I saw as a young supporter in the late 1960s was the chunky, feisty John Smith.

He was to United in their heady days under Frank O’Farrell what Jimmy Giles and Billy Bremner were to Don Revie’s Leeds United.

In fact, Smith faced off against Bobby Collins, who taught Giles and Bremner many tricks of their trade at Elland Road, in one of United’s finest hours.

It was against Bury in a Third Division (League One) promotion showdown that featured on Match Of The Day (Ken Wolstenholme, David Coleman & all) in front of nearly 11,000 at Plainmoor in March 1968.

United won 3-0. Smith, formerly with Spurs, West Ham and Leyton Orient, was outstanding.

O’Farrell sold him to Swindon Town to finance a rebuild, and 12 months later Smith helped the giant-killing Robins to overturn Arsenal in the League Cup Final (3-1) at Wembley.

If you were looking for a combination of class and graft in the early 1970s, Tommy Mitchinson and Mal Lucas were your men.

Mitchinson (Sunderland, Aston Villa) exuded quality on the ball, he had a canny ability to find space and defence-splitting passes and he carried an air of authority that few before or since have managed.

Welsh international Lucas is still rated to this day as one of the best midfielders to play for Norwich City earlier in his career, he was tough, relentless and a natural leader.

The mid-70s saw a series of frustrating mid-table seasons, but they were brightened by the passing and vision of ex-Charlton schemer Cliff Myers (94/12), the equally cultured Lew Chatterley (Villa, Grimsby, Southampton) and Dave Rudge, who turned himself into a tireless midfielder after starting as a jinky winger at Villa.

Mike Green’s attacking sides always entertained, especially with inventive players like Kenny Raper, Alan Wilson, Roy Davies and the Scot Tommy Sermanni creating chances for a free-scoring attack.

The best of those was Sermanni – there wasn’t much of him, but he was selfless, clever and very good on his day.

It’s a measure of how much the power-balance of the game has changed that in November 1980, United signed former Luton, Villa, Derby and Everton star Rioch after a spell in the USA – it was just over two years after he’d captained Scotland in the World Cup Finals.

That would never happen now, or even close to it.

Rioch was 33 at the time, but still possessed his skill, tackling prowess and ferocious shooting. Rioch played 86 games as player and player-manager, and it was his misfortune that he was here at a time when chairman Tony Boyce was tightening the purse strings in the face of sub-2,000 gates.

In his prime there had been fewer better midfielders in the UK than Rioch.

He was known as a hard man, as well as a classy one, and a succession of ambitious young opponents were waiting to take him on in the Fourth Division.

After he’d taken a fair bit of stick in one of his first games at Hartlepool, I suggested to him that he was going to be a ‘marked man’.

Rioch stopped me and stressed: “I’ve done a few things I’m not proud of in my career and, if one or two people kick me now, I’m not going to complain – and I don’t want you doing it for me either!”

When Rioch became manager, one of his best signings was another formidable midfielder in Durham-born Alan Little, who’d also learned his trade at Villa Park.

Little, the brother of Villa forward Brian Little, wore No.5 for most of his 60 games for Torquay, but no one doubted where his shuddering tackles and accurate, pragmatic passes were delivered.

United fans suffered through some depressing times in the mid-1980s, after Boyce sold the club to Dave Webb, but some players fought hard and acquitted themselves well, including player-coach Eddie Kelly, Derek Dawkins and Derek Hall in midfield.

Scot Kelly had been part of Arsenal’s great Double-winning team in 1971, as well as playing for QPR and Leicester, but he found himself battling in a losing cause here at the end of his career.

Dawkins may not have been the most skilful of players, but he made up for it with bottomless energy, spirit and a fair bit of know-how.

Nicknamed ‘The Dude’, he was as popular at Plainmoor as he had been at Mansfield, Bournemouth and Weymouth.

He played 211 games in five years under Webb, Stuart Morgan and Cyril Knowles. Highlights included a typically selfless day at centre-half, alongside the inexperienced David Cole, in the vital last-day relegation-beating 2-2 draw with Crewe in 1987 and a deliriously received winner (1-0) against Spurs in the first leg of a League Cup-tie at Plainmoor only four months later.

Morgan’s astute recruitment also brought midfielders like future Portsmouth and Eire star Alan McLoughlin, a young Ian Holloway and an even younger Chris Myers to the club.

Myers, only 17 when he ran himself into the ground against Crewe, didn’t have far to come – he grew up in Watcombe where his dad Cliff lived.

Myers’ eventful career with United embraced three spells, 135 games, seven managers, a £100,000 move to Dundee United and other stints with Dawlish, Barnstaple, Scarborough and Exeter City.

He also struck a successful spot-kick in the Play-Off Shoot-Out victory over Blackpool at Wembley in 1991.

Chris freely admitted that, shaking with nerves, he ran up, shut his eyes and hit the ball as hard as he could – goalie Steve McIlhargey got his fingers to it, but couldn’t keep it out!

By then United had enjoyed just over two years under Cyril Knowles that saw Dawkins share midfield duties with several teammates, including Ian Weston, ex-trainee John Morrison and three senior pros, Sean Haslegrave, Russell Musker and Sean Joyce.

Haslegrave was remarkable in every way.

He’d already played 550 games with distinction for Stoke, Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough, Preston and York, and he was 36 when he arrived as Knowles’ player-coach in the summer of 1987.

Suffice to say that he played 37 league and cup games without a break before Knowles finally rested him – he still went on as sub – for a 3-2 win at Wrexham in late February.

Apart from still being a damn good player, Haslegrave ran and tackled as hard as any of his younger teammates every week – and also worked all the hours God gave as Knowles’ No.2 and coaching trainees like Lee Sharpe.

He and Knowles were a great managerial team, yet Haslegrave always believed - he told me so before he died tragically young at 52 - that his boss made a mistake when, fearing for his ageing legs, he left him out of the muddy second leg of the Play-Off Final against Swansea.

It was a 3-3 draw, United losing 5-4 on aggregate, Sean insisting that his experience could have made a difference.

Musker had been signed by Morgan after playing at higher levels with Bristol City, Exeter and Gillingham.

He was an excellent passer and, although he had trouble convincing Knowles that his talent could help to complement Cyril’s pretty direct style of play, Musker still played nearly 90 games in two spells and coached the youth team before giving Taunton Town some of their most successful years in a decade there as manager.

Yorkshireman Joyce, signed from Doncaster Rovers, was deservedly a fixture in the side for five years in which he played nearly 200 games (17gls), including the 1989 and 1991 trips to Wembley.

He left absolutely everything out on the pitch in every game, knew what he was good at and wasn’t too proud to stick to it.

They are principles which he’s since passed on to hundreds of younger players during more than 25 years as manager of Southern League Bideford.

Few managers, and he played under half-a-dozen at Plainmoor alone, looked at Joyce in their dressing-rooms and left him out of the team.

The classy Micky Holmes was an influential midfielder in the 1991 promotion team before moving back up North after just over a year here.

That helped to make way in the mid-1990s for future Welsh international Paul Trollope, who was terrific value after signing from Swindon, and Paul Buckle.

Trollope – the phrase ‘box to box’ could have been invented for him – eventually earned United £100,000 when Derby bought him.

Buckle, who moved permanently after a loan spell from Brentford, was in a similar hard-working mould, played alongside Trollope in the 1994 Play-Off side under Don O’Riordan and, of course, he later returned for a hugely successful four years as manager.

United finished bottom under Eddie May in 1996, but he did bring a real character to Plainmoor in Charlie Oatway.

West Londoner Oatway arrived from Cardiff City and returned to his roots at Brentford just over 18 months later.

But in between he was voted Player Of The Year, tackled everything that moved anywhere near him, and a few that weren’t, and wore his heart on his sleeves, which were usually rolled up as a statement of intent.

Gulls fans loved him.

Was their ever a cannier, more experienced midfield than the one put together by Kevin Hodges? Player-coach Steve McCall, Gary Clayton and Chris Leadbitter all came from Plymouth and all arrived after fine careers elsewhere.

McCall had been part of Bobby Robson’s great Ipswich Town sides in the 1980s, Clayton had played hundreds of games for Doncaster, Cambridge, Huddersfield and Argyle and Leadbitter had done the same for Hereford, Cambridge, Bournemouth and Plymouth.

They were able to do their highly effective thing while wing-backs Andy Gurney and Paul Gibbs charged up and down and Rodney Jack left defenders gasping on passes from the old guys.

They were all pros to their bootstraps, and many of us remember McCall’s sumptuous ‘farewell’ goal, struck from range with his cultured left foot, in the PO Semi-Final rout of Scarborough at Plainmoor.

Clayton and Leadbitter carried on for a little while when Wes Saunders took over as manager, but their departure led to players like ex-Newcastle, Spurs and England star Waddle, Mick O’Brien and Brian Healy joining the club.

It had been eight years since Waddle had missed ‘that’ crucial penalty against Germany in the 1990 World Cup Semi-Final.

Yet just as he was being interviewed on the pitch after his Torquay debut at Halifax, a local lad of only nine or ten suddenly shouted: “Hey, Chris – what about that penalty then?”

They had to do the interview again and Waddle left after seven games for United, and no wins.

Healy was a skilful passer, who might have done even better in a winning team, but United struggled in 1998-99 and even worse the following season.

Chairman Mike Bateson eventually brought in Colin Lee in a rescue act that culminated in the ‘Battle of ‘Barnet’, where United won 3-2 to stay in the League.

By then United’s midfield included players like the wholeheartedly Jason Rees, Richard Kell and the Frenchman Khalid Chalqi.

During that difficult period United’s Youth scheme produced two promising locally-born midfielders whose careers took them in very different directions.

Saunders didn’t give Luke Guttridge a pro contract, because he thought he was too small.

So Guttridge went off and played more than 500 games for Cambridge, Southend, Northampton, Aldershot and Luton, to name a few.

But Matt Hockley did stay, despite being released by Roy McFarland, and thank goodness he did. It was McFarland who signed two of the best midfielders to grace Plainmoor over the last 25 years, Alex Russell and Jason Fowler, but it was his successor Leroy Rosenior who brought Hockley back into the fold in 2002.

In eight roller-coaster years at his beloved hometown club Hockley made 254 appearances and scored ten goals.

‘Hockers’ never aspired to the heights which Russell and Fowler could produce, but like Joyce before him, he revelled in the role of ‘getter and giver’, ably aided, often away from home, by the equally gutsy Kevin Wills.

Hockley got so good at it that Russell once admitted that he often preferred Matt to Fowler alongside him, because he knew exactly what the former was going to do.

It was quite a compliment, because Russell, the ‘conductor’ of Rosenior’s promotion winning orchestra, was a close friend and huge admirer of Fowler.

For sheer quality, Fowler (Bristol City, Cardiff) was right up there with the very best, but he’d been held back by health issues earlier in his career and an arthritic hip sometimes limited him at Plainmoor.

When he was finally forced to retire after 107 appearances here, a visibly moved Rosenior took the unusual step of escorting Fowler around the pitch, not long before a league kick-off, so the Plainmoor faithful could bid him a proper farewell.

Not a person stayed in their seats.

Throughout four memorable seasons (2001-2005) Russell, whom McFarland had signed from his old club Cambridge, ran the show.

He was the ultimate proof of the old adage that, on a football pitch, good players play more simple passes than anyone else.

He wasn’t the quickest or the strongest tackler – he left that to Hockley – but his ability to find space was uncanny, as was the range and accuracy of his passing.

Left-Back Brian McGlinchey, who’d played for clubs like Manchester City, Gillingham and Plymouth, said of him: “Aggie makes all the rest of us look better than we really are.”

I never heard a bigger compliment by one player of another.

Russell was even better trying to keep United in League One than he had been getting them there, but relegation in 2005 prompted him to leave for Bristol City, where he duly helped one Gary Johnson to take the Robins up into the Championship.

Hockley battled on, alongside players like Darren Garner (Plymouth, Rotherham), Chelsea loanee Danny Hollands, Lee Mansell (covered elsewhere) and Adam Murray as United, increasingly wracked by off-field problems, slid down from 2004 and, after a Great Escape under Ian Atkins (2006), out of the League a year later.

But another salvation was at hand, when Bateson’s decision to stand down after more than 16 years eventually led to a takeover by a board of local businessmen backed by Lotto winner Paul Bristow and his wife Thea.

They provided the cash to mount a revival under Lee, who returned as chief executive, and manager Paul Buckle which saw United turn things round in spectacular fashion.

One of Buckle’s first and most important signings was a new captain and midfield flagbearer in Chris Hargreaves.

Hargreaves was already 35 and had played more than 500 games for his hometown Grimsby, Hull, Hereford, Plymouth, Northampton, Brentford and Oxford when he arrived at Plainmoor.

But, like Haslegrave 20 years before, he was still fit, and perfectly fitted for the job.

The Conference demanded physical commitment, know-how and mental fortitude, Buckle knew it from his time coaching at Exeter and in Hargreaves he had a nailed-on leader.

Many times, almost single-handed it seemed, he turned flat performances into important results.

After an agonising near-miss in 2008, when United blew a 3-1 lead against Exeter in the PO Semi- Final, Buckle bought Nicky Wroe from York City, his passing skills and shooting power perfectly complementing Hargreaves’ more in-yer-face style.

Yet when the moment came for someone to crack the deadlock in the 2009 PO Final against Cambridge at Wembley, it was Hargreaves who did it, galloping upfield to support a counter attack with a rasping drive from 20 yards.

He ended up making 121 appearances in three years and Wroe 143, including 23 goals, before making way for a new generation.

Their successors Craig Stanley and Damon Lathrope couldn’t quite power United to victory over Stevenage in the 2011 League Two PO Final (0-1) at Old Trafford.

But when Martin Ling took over from Buckle, he found the ideal slot for Lathrope, just in front of the back-four and setting up attacks for the super-talented Eunan O’Kane and the tireless Mansell, who’d once again been released from his defensive duties.

Lathrope ended up playing 165 games in two spells (without scoring once!), while O’Kane delighted us all over 122 appearances and 14 sweetly-struck goals.

He may have been slightly built, but O’Kane, who’d been released by Everton and had to go back to Coleraine in the Irish Premiership, was actually as tough mentally as his Ulster upbringing had been.

He wasn’t slow to let more senior colleagues know if they didn’t give him the ball when he wanted it, and that strength helped to earn big moves to upwardly mobile Bournemouth (£175,000) and then Leeds (£500,000) before injuries curtailed his career.

It was Buckle who signed Eunan, but it was under Ling, in a passing team including players like Kevin Nicholson, Danny Stevens, Billy Bodin and Rene Howe up front, that he really shone.

Since United were relegated back to the National League again (2014), the outstanding midfielder has been Luke Young.

Young was a teenager who’d just broken into the Plymouth first team when an O’Kane-inspired United did a rare and memorable ‘double’ over the Pilgrims on their way to the 2012 Play-Offs.

Young then joined the Gulls in 2014 and gave his considerable all here over the next four years, playing 149 games, most as captain, and scoring 19 goals, many of them show-stoppers.

Nobody deserved a good move more than him, and he eventually got it, helping to spark the spectacular revival of Wrexham before returning to the Westcountry with Cheltenham Town last summer.

Three other players in that department have stood out in the last few years – Asa Hall, Connor Lemonheigh-Evans and Armani Little.

Even if his six years and 192 games (46gls) were spent outside the EFL, no one tried harder or longer to lead United back there than the talismanic Hall.

He rightly earned himself a deserved place in any roll of honour at Plainmoor.

Lemonheigh-Evans and Little always looked a cut above the National League, which they’ve gone on to prove elsewhere since.

And who knows where they, and United, might be now if they’d all enjoyed even a small slice of luck, instead of the other way round, in ‘that’ PO Final at Ashton Gate in 2021?

Right, deep breath!

We’re looking for two midfielders for the final XI, which means a shortlist of eight.

Much as I’d like to, partly because I know so many of my older friends rightly rate him so highly, I’m going to pass over John Smith, because he left United just before I’d started even as a trainee reporter.

So my shortlist of eight central midfielders from the last half-century to hang my hat on in any situation is: Tommy Mitchinson (1969-72), Bruce Rioch (1980-83), Alan Little 1982-84 (60/6), Sean Joyce (1988-93), Alex Russell (2001-2005), Jason Fowler (2001-2005), Chris Hargreaves (2007-2010) and Eunan O’Kane (2009-2012).

Midfield Shorts

United’s midfield three for the 1998 Play-Off Final (v Colchester) at Wembley was Gary Clayton, Chris Leadbitter and Steve McCall.

Their combined ages added up to 101.

Since ex-Gulls midfielder Tommy Sermanni (1979-82) finished playing, he’s become far better known as a coach than he was as a player.

Sermanni has managed the Australia (three times), USA, Canada and New Zealand women’s teams, plus a host of other club sides in the US and Far East.

Luke Young may have been ‘Made In Plymouth’, but he had no trouble becoming a committed Gull in 2014.

His dad Mark, also a midfielder, had been a Plainmoor trainee under Bruce Rioch 30 years before.

Desperate for a new start, Sean Joyce followed his ex-Doncaster Rovers mate Paul Holmes to Plainmoor in 1988 hoping to persuade manager Cyril Knowles to give him a chance.

With little money to spare, Holmes and Joyce shared the same digs bedroom for a week – and the same bed!

The Shortlist So Far

GOALKEEPER – Mike Mahoney 1970-75, John Turner 1978-80/1983-84, Neville Southall 1998-2000, Bobby Olejnik 2011-2012

RIGHT-BACK – John Bond 1966-69, Jim McNichol 1986-91, Paul Holmes 1988-91/1999-2003, Andy Gurney 1997-99

LEFT-BACK – Tom Kelly 1986-95, John Uzzell 1989-91, Brian McGlinchey 2003-2006, Kevin Nicholson 2007-2017

RIGHT CENTRE BACK – Dick Edwards 1970-73, Matt Elliott 1989-92, Alex Watson 1995-2001, Steve Woods 2001-2009

LEFT CENTRE BACK – Mike Green 1977-79, Phil Lloyd 1987-92, Wes Saunders 1990-93, Craig Taylor 2003-2007

RIGHT WING – Donal Murphy 1978-80, Paul Smith 1988-91, Rodney Jack 1995-98, Wayne Carlisle 2008-2011

LEFT WING – Tony Scott 1967-70, Mark Loram 1985-93, Kevin Hill 1997-2008, Danny Stevens 2007- 2014

CENTRAL MIDFIELD (2) – Tommy Mitchinson 1969-72, Bruce Rioch 1980-83, Alan Little 1982-84, Sean Joyce 1988-1993, Alex Russell 2001-2005, Jason Fowler 2001-2005, Chris Hargreaves 2007-2010, Eunan O’Kane 2009-2012

Tickets for the Dave Thomas Team of a Lifetime event at Plainmoor on Friday, December 13 are available to purchase from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/clearskypublishing/1440324