David Thomas - Moving story: when clubs change home

Here's a question for you: what have Torquay United chairmen Tony Boyce, Dave Webb, Mike Bateson, Chris Roberts, Dave Phillips and Clarke Osborne got in common?
Answer: they have all, over the course of the last 50 or so years, said that a move away from Plainmoor to a new stadium was the key to a sustainable future for the club.
Others may have said the same at some point, and it might have slipped my mind. If so, apologies. Most, if not all, received varying amounts of ‘stick’ for suggesting that United might leave Plainmoor.
Interestingly, apart from Webb, Roberts and Osborne, they were all locally-based and/or long standing supporters for whom going to Plainmoor was practically part of their DNA.
So it’s surely a bit much for anybody to lambast the latest incumbent, Osborne, for delivering the same message that so many have done before him.
I first walked through the Marnham Road turnstiles and onto the Pop Side in September 1964 (Stockport County 1-0).
The old Cow Shed, the Mini-Stand, those Babbacombe End sleepers, the wooden grandstand they brought from Buckfastleigh racecourse and re-erected in 1927 – done ‘em all, like so many before and after me.
I caught the Saturday ‘Football Special’ bus from Newton Abbot, and a few times followed in the footsteps of the great Don Mills, who often walked from Castle Circus, up St Marychurch Road to Plainmoor before casting his spell over friend and foe alike.
Why would any of us want to say ‘Goodbye To All That’?
And of course, we’re not the only ones.
Fans who loved Gay Meadow, the Manor Ground, Millmoor, Fellowes Park, The Dell, Leeds Road, Goldstone Ground, Boothferry Park, The Feethams, Eastville, The (real) Den, Bootham Crescent, Griffin Park, Maine Road, Sealand Road, Highbury, Springfield Park, The Old Show Ground, Somerton Park, Belle Vue, Upton Park, Saltergate, Vetch Field, Roker Park, Baseball Ground, Burnden Park, Filbert Street, Elm Park, Victoria Ground, Ayresome Park, Ninian Park, County Ground (Northampton) - they all felt the same way before moving to pastures new.
And Everton diehards will be the next to need counselling when they leave wonderful, towering Goodison Park for their new place by what used to be Liverpool docks. But at the very least, most of those moves helped the clubs to keep pace with the times and, in many cases, it galvanised them.
Are any of them worse off for doing it?
The brutal fact is that you can hardly run a professional football club, even a small one, on the income from a bit of sponsorship and opening the gates to the public every ten days from August to May – unless you’ve got someone like Osborne to pick up the tab.
United still haven’t even found a site yet, although Nightingale Park looked pretty good before local politics blocked it.
Yes, they must keep making the case for moving and they’ll have to try and please, as they say, all of the people all of the time on the details of a new stadium.
Not a bland ‘Meccano-set’, please!
But even if Clarke Osborne comes and goes without building a new home for the club, it surely won’t be long before whoever comes after him starts talking about doing the same thing...