I must admit to having a soft spot for Plymouth Argyle. This is in part because of the dedication of the Green Army who travel long distances to support their team. The club also went through a very difficult period when it came close to disappearing from the Football League.
I must admit to having a soft spot for Plymouth Argyle. This is in part because of the dedication of the Green Army who travel long distances to support their team. The club also went through a very difficult period when it came close to disappearing from the Football League.
In my role as mainland football correspondent for Radio Scilly, I am aware of how much the training for youngsters that Argyle have undertaken on the isolated islands is appreciated there. They have quite a few fans on the islands and station supremo Keri Jones likes me to keep an eye out for Argyle stories.
Neil Warnock is known for being a bit over the top and his claim that ‘I really do believe the Premier League is within reach’ for Argyle in his column in today’s Football League Paper does seem to confirm the view that his exuberance sometimes runs away with him. He says that ‘If they can get in the Championship, they have a chance’, but they have to get there first and the contemporary Championship with its benefactors and parachute payments is an unforgiving place.
Of course, Plymouth are his local team as he owns a place in the back of beyond between Liskeard and Tavistock. Warnock points to a £50m project in the pipeline that will give them a new grandstand, providing a ‘fabulous stadium’ when it is finished. But a great stadium of itself does not win matches, often the contrary.
Warnock refers to their fanbase, which is certainly dedicated and numerous for League 2 where they are undoubtedly punching below their weight. But then Argyle often seem to have done that. Plymouth is a large city, but not that prosperous. In some respects it never fully recovered from the pounding it took in the Second World War while its traditional naval role has declined.
Also their catchment area to the immediate west is bisected by the Tamar. It can be crossed, of course, and Warnock cites the case of the Argyle fan who set out at 2 a.m. from Penzance in the far west of Cornwall to go to an away game at Hartlepool. I remember coming back from Cornwall on an Easter Monday before the Tamar Bridge was built and many Argyle fans getting on the train at Liskeard. Nevertheless, there is a cultural barrier: Cornwall is a rugby county while many incomers have football allegiances elsewhere.
League 1 has to be the immediate target for Argyle, then have consolidated, to aim for the Championship. In many ways they are an object lesson in the limits imposed on what a club can achieve by physical, economic and cultural geography. But I wish them well.