Abandoned passions, silent terraces

There's a sad but interesting reminder come to my attention today, about the perilous existence of English football's lower-division and non-league clubs.  It's timely, as rumours about Torquay United's prospective new owners take a leap forward - not necessarily for the better - and Gulls fans wait, with bated breath, to hear the answers to the grimmest of questions.  Will we still have a football club?  What will the club look like?  How will it be run?  Where will it play?

Seaside resorts and successful football clubs seem to have an all-or-nothing relationship.  Bournemouth and Brighton have both come through mighty perilous journeys before arriving in happier climes.  Blackpool have tasted the sweet success of Premier League football, before plummeting down the divisions.  Morecambe and Southend seem, on the surface of it, to be making a consistently successful go of it.  And then there's Scarborough FC.  Scarborough FC, who came to Plainmoor in the second leg of the 1998 Division Three play-off semi final, lost, and subsequently spiralled into relegation, and then non-existence.  Recent chatter on a Torquay forum put me onto a website, with photos of the then-abandoned McCain Stadium, Scarborough's one-time home, and clearly as characterful as any you'd find in football.  Images of the empty ground, where spectators would once have chanted, cheered and waved their scarves in the air, seem particularly haunting, almost apocalyptic.  What a sorry affair, and what a sad demise of a football club, trying to survive in just the sort of town that makes our football pyramid unique in the world.

The eerie silence of the McCain Stadium (source: Urban Ghosts)

Of course, the story doesn't quite end there for Scarborough, with the arising of their phoenix club, Scarborough Athletic.  The team now play ten miles away in Bridlington, and are riding high, currently sitting second in the Evo-Stik Northern League First Division North.  Will they one day return to the glittering heights of the Football League?

The McCain in action (source: Derelict Places)

Back in Torquay, we wait for the news that will either confirm the future of our club, or ratify its conclusion.  Non-league football is a cruel, stark and brutal world, a million miles from the game that so many people know from Sky Sports or Match of the Day.  Winter is coming to the English Riviera - and unlike its usual balmy climate, the forecast of clubs past points towards a very cold, very dark season ahead.

Torquay in play-off action versus Scarborough at a packed-out plainmoor, 1998 (source: Herald Express)