Meeting Mark Thomas, the new chief exec at Torquay United

One year into the Bryn Consortium ownership at Torquay United and the Gulls have recruited a new chief executive with an international background in sport, on and off the field of play.

Mark Thomas has arrived at Plainmoor with an impressive CV as a rugby player in Hong Kong, and perhaps more pertinently for United, a CV in business that has taken in ventures across the Asia-Pacific region.

It was, however, on the field of play that this child of the military found his first Far East calling.

“When I was growing up, my father was in the RAF, so we were posted around various different camps,” said Thomas. “I went to College in Sheffield, then lived in Manchester for a year, lived in London for a year and somehow ended up playing rugby in Australia.

“I’ve always had a passion for sport and football was my first love, but when I lived in Buckingham, I was taken kicking and screaming to a rugby-only school.

“Since then, I’ve always played rugby and it was fundamentally sport that took me around the world. One of the defaults of going to a rugby school was that I became reasonable at the game, playing to an ok standard.

“After a spell in Australia, I ended up in Hong Kong, where they were trying to pull a Rugby Sevens team together to qualify for the inaugural World Cup Rugby Sevens, which we did manage to do.

“We didn’t do very well in the tournament, but it certainly ticked the box to say I’ve played internationally, although, to be honest, I was a very average club player.”

Despite his modesty in terms of rugby achievement, the future for Thomas would take him into business, and the development of a sports marketing organisation in China, where he would meet his future wife and raise three sons.

Sport in China has seen massive growth over the past two decades and United’s new boss was at the heart of that progress, developing brands, commercial partnerships and hosting sporting events.

“After a couple of years in Hong Kong, I basically thought there was no money in rugby and I needed to work out what I was going to do,” added Thomas.

“I wanted to be an entrepreneur and it was pretty obvious China was going to be the next big thing, so I started to learn the lay of the land and, when I was ready, I started my own business, which I ran for 17 years.

“We were based in Shanghai, but had offices in Beijing, Chengdu and Wangzuo, as well as in Hong Kong.

“We worked in sports marketing across the Asia-Pacific region and during my business, there were three fundamental areas. Firstly, we worked for brands, and we looked at the strategy through to activation.

“We worked with people like Adidas and a lot of work on fitness and running, as well as their grassroots football programme in China. We worked with Diageo, the drinks company, who had a big programme on Guinness and rugby.

“The second thing was working with international rights holders and that could be a Premier League football team, a Formula One team, or an international federation. We would them build a strategy across Asia in terms of their commercial development.

“The third and probably most foolish thing we did was to invest in our own Event IP (Intellectual Property), so we invested and promoted our own events. I’ve done mass participation events, like running, Rugby Sevens, World Archery, World Rowing and a pan-Asian motorsports event with a French company.

“We created the Asia Le Mans Series, with races in Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, so a varied CV of events.”

Like many things in business, it was simple phone call that changed the direction of Thomas’ career, and a planted seed blossomed into his new role at Torquay United.

“Someone gave me a call to ask if I would be interested and it planted a seed in me,” he said. “I’d always wanted to work in a club of stature, where I could take what I’ve learned in my career to add some value to it.

“I was trying to find the right marriage between my background and what a club needed for their objectives.

“From that seed, I had a call with some of the Bryn Directors, and they invited me down here for a full day of interviews with the Board and club stakeholders.

“It just felt right. It was something I was looking for and then, when you come to the Torbay area, it is stunning. This is a place of much interest and there are real positives about the community, and hopefully ways in which I can support the club.”

It was initially family that brought Thomas back to the UK and, along with the opportunity to develop something special at Plainmoor, it is the natural beauty of the area that has brought him to Torbay.

“When I was in China, I met and married a Chinese lady and we had three sons,” he said. “One of the main reasons for exiting my company in China was for the children because we wanted to give them a good education in the UK.

“We wanted to give them the feel of being British, so we moved back a few years ago and got the kids through school and university, and now we are looking for a new challenge.

“My wife loves seafood and going to the nicest restaurants, and she is completely sold [on Torbay], and I am completely sold.

“The only way we can do this job properly is to locate down here and be part of the community we are trying to serve. We are on a journey together and when the Bryn guys took over, they captured the feeling of the community.

“The club had been maybe listing for a few years, and they invigorated the supporters to re-engage with the club and what it means to the town.

“A football club is a community asset of the greatest importance to generations of fans, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all of whom come to clubs and bond relationships around a football club.”

Now he has been in the role for a few weeks, it is already clear that Thomas, like all of us, has fallen head over heels for the club and the local community.

Aside from that emotional connection, however, there is a mission to develop Torquay United as a sustainable and successful operation.

“I have been overwhelmed by the friendliness of the welcome from the people here,” said Thomas. “I already feel somehow part of the furniture.

“The feeling, passion and love of this club from the fans is almost palpable. The Bryn consortium and all of us are custodians of the club for the community.

“My job as a chief executive on the sporting side is to give [manager] Paul Wotton and the players an environment to thrive as best as they can and hopefully achieve those sporting aspirations that we all have.

“Secondly, it is about the management of the club. When I was growing up, my local club in Buckingham went out of business and there is a litany of those stories, so we must get a clear financial and sustainability programme.

“It is the basic economics of spending within our means and having a clear aspiration of how we use resources, but I’m convinced we have the team to move forward.”

It is that connection with the community that will be so crucial to the future advancement of Torquay United, on and off the pitch.

Football clubs are always driven and judged by results, but the wider perspective is to provide United with a solid and stable platform to thrive as a community asset.

“We will be engaging with Torbay Council to see how we can take the club forward,” said Thomas. “Like many coastal towns, there has been a challenging environment with how tourism has changed and young people seeking employment in other parts of the country.

“Torbay has a natural beauty and a sense of community that gives it a head-start over other towns. The area is stunning, we were sat in the marina one evening and sent a photo to our sons, who thought we were in Monaco.

“The club is a community asset that can help promote the town in a positive way. It also has the opportunity to galvanise the spirit of the community, obviously with performances on the pitch, but also everything else we do to make the fans proud of their club.

“When you’ve been through administration, there is only one way to go. If we can bring everyone together, the club can be part of a greater vision for Torbay.

“Paul feels very optimistic with his squad, he has clear goals of what he wants to achieve. With the management and continuity on the footballing side, it gives us an opportunity to push forward.

“There is a footballing step forward that it would be great for the club to take. We can’t say anything definite, but the club and the fans deserve a higher level of competition.

“From a club perspective, we never want to see that experience of administration again, and that means being financially sustainable.”