Torquay United 3 Enfield Town 1
Report by Andrew Warshaw
Never mind the scoreline, feel the performance. Rarely, if ever, has a two-goal defeat promised so much.
It’s no exaggeration to suggest that on chances alone, Enfield Town’s opening game of the season – on paper one of the toughest trips of the entire campaign – could well have resulted in three points, let alone one.
Instead, we got nothing despite having to field a makeshift back three who had never played together and staging a brave second-half fightback.
Those who weren’t at Torquay on Saturday may question how a 3-1 defeat could be described in such a positive vein but even among the Gulls faithful the narrative at the final whistle was that we were distinctly unfortunate over the 90 minutes.
Such a shame, therefore, that we were playing catch-up so early in the game – the opposite to this time last year when we took a surprise lead on our National League South debut at the same venue, only to ultimately fall short.
Having lost Adam Thompson to a hamstring issue, joining the unavailable Henry Hawkins on the sidelines, Joe Payne was drafted into the back three with Ruaridh Donaldson switching to the middle.
With a couple of others missing too, Town were only able to name five substitutes instead of seven but started on the front foot and looked confident until being hit with a quickfire double blow.
Inside nine minutes, Cody Cooke’s flick-on straight from a Rhys Forster goal-kick found Louis Dennis who supplied the finish and two minutes later, we found ourselves further behind.
When the linesman controversially kept his flag down, Jordan Young ran on to the highly influential Matt Worthington’s inch-perfect pass and produced a sumptuous strike that no keeper was going to save.
Worthington, on whom Torquay have placed great hope this season, was running the show from his deep-lying midfield role and at this point, his team were too slick and too clever for Town, finding pockets of space, timing runs with precision and exploiting an unfamiliar defence.
But on 25 minutes Town so nearly halved the deficit when James Hamon pulled off a remarkable save from Lemar Reynolds’ close-range strike. Had the ball twirled the other way, it would have ended up in the Torquay net. Instead it spun against the post before being cleared.
It was indicative of Town’s ill-luck and by halftime we were three down courtesy of Cooke’s perfectly struck side-foot penalty after Payne was beaten on his inside and pulled down Young.
While they controlled much of the first half, Torquay were nothing if not physical and a couple of crunching challenges on Xavier Benjamin and Billy Leonard resulted in yellow cards though the hit on the latter might easily have resulted in red.
H-T 0-3
The hosts may have been anticipating a landslide but Town had other ideas and instead of damage limitation, we poured forward.
Once Forster had clawed away Sonny Blu Lo-Everton’s curling effort to save us conceding again, we took over as Torquay’s intensity dropped.
Just after the hour mark, Mickey Parcell was in the right place at right time with a half-driven tap in – apparently his first goal from open play since his return to the club — and from then on, it was one-way traffic.
Sam Youngs went close to finishing off a sublime four-man move, Tommy Wood’s header found Hamon in sparkling form again, Hayden Bullas had a shot deflected wide and substitute Harry Lodovica‘s first-time effort struck Hamon before bouncing up on to the bar instead of into the net.
There were more lucky escapes for Torquay, who were struggling with Joe Payne’s long throws. With 10 minutes left, Reynolds, clean through on goal moments after seemingly been struck in the face like a clothes line with nothing given, shot agonisingly wide of the far post. Then Avan Jones, during seven minutes of stoppage time, found himself free at the far post but couldn’t direct Donaldson’s corner towards goal.
One ominous sight for Town was Benjamin limping off with what may have been concussion following a clash of heads with Cooke that delayed the game for five minutes and forced Town into yet another defensive switch.
Late on, there were cameo outings for new signings Matty Macarther and midfielder T’Shane Gallimore and the tremendous ovation the players got from the travelling faithful at the final whistle said everything about the effort and fighting spirit which augurs well for the new campaign.
“When you go 3-0 down, it’s a very difficult road back against any opposition,” said Gavin Macpherson. “We made some poor decisions at the start and that’s massively understandable. I know that’s a weird thing to say because you never accept that. But if we had Tommy and Henry, those goals simply don’t happen. We had a totally makeshift back three, square pegs in round holes, and ended up playing three fullbacks instead of three centrehalves.”
“Once they got themselves together, we stepped up and how we haven’t got at least a draw against top opposition, I don’t know. All in all, I’m absolutely delighted with them. I never thought we were massively short of Torquay and my over-riding feeling is lots of promising signs.”
“I wasn’t allowing damage limitation. Our supporters are the best in this league, no question. They acknowledged how the team put a shift in and just fell short. The fantastic support from the warmup to the end, you wouldn’t get that at any other club in this division.”
Town:
Forster; Benjamin (Macarthur 79), Donaldson, Payne; Jones, Parcell (Gallimore 88), Bullas (Brown 81), Youngs, Leonard; Wood (Lodovica 75), Reynolds