Us 3 Torquay 3

There’s a design flaw at the Kassam Stadium; it looks like it should be a football stadium but it’s really a gothic cathedral with black clouds circling its towering steeples and crows staring from its darkest recesses. It’s a place where good things go bad.

It’s where the teenage captain of Manchester United reserves turned into a small lad doing keepy ups in a bench coat. Where Mark Wright arrived as one of the most promising manager’s in the country and left a racist pariah. Where Lee Bradbury arrived a wizard playmaking magician and left an overweight, over paid heap of crap.

Last night’s capitulation was like staring through a mirror image of what might have been. Us in yellow and blue, them in blue and yellow. Lee Mansell was Paul Scholes and Tim Sills was a star striker. These parallel universes met in the middle of midfield where Mansell stared at Pettefer. Two rabid number seven midfield gerbils. Identical twins – one bolstering a team focussed on success, the other on failure.

One thing about Torquay is that they concede lots of goals. They also score lots of goals. They probably won’t get away with it all season, but had we got nine, they’d have found a way to score 10. Its what the dark cathedral of hell decided.