From the rubble comes creation

When the final whistle sounded at Home Park on Saturday afternoon, the Plymouth Argyle players, as usual, applauded the home supporters stacked across three sides of the ground. One player, however, appeared to clap a little harder.

Midway through the second half of the preceding 1-1 draw with Southampton, a long ball down the right channel of Argyle’s half was pursued by a Saints player, in yards of space. Like Mr. Benn’s shopkeeper clad in green, suddenly David Norris was there, sliding full length across the zippy, moist surface to crunch the ball out of play.

The ‘Zoo’ corner of the Lyndhurst Stand were not shy in displaying their appreciation. An ensuing chant of "There’s Only One David Norris" was the loudest noise of an atmospheric afternoon in front of a respectable 14600 souls, quite clearly in response to continuing speculation of the Peterborough-born midfielder’s impending departure.

Rumours abound that Norris handed in a transfer request last week, and Paul Sturrock has failed to confirm or deny this, suggesting the player is almost certainly on his way. Saturday’s opponents have been tracking Norris since before the summer, joined by Norwich, Leicester, and Ipswich. The latter, rolling in Marcus Evans's debt-laden millions, seem favourites to nab him, with a £1.8million bid currently on the table and the club representing a base much nearer to Norris’s roots.

The majority of Pilgrim fans have resigned themselves to the loss of this committed and diligent performer, with his notably fervent applause for the Green Army on Saturday strengthening this assertion – it being viewed as something of a goodbye. Tony Capaldi, Akos Buzsaky, Barry Hayles, and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, the last four first-team players to leave the club, all reacted similarly in their final games. Slowly, the squad which pushed hard for a top six slot this year – and last – under Ian Holloway is being broken up, and you get the sense that this was a strong social as well as footballing group. Greed, ambition, and club decision-making, in varying degrees of concentration, has pulled them away, yet their time at Argyle was clearly a valued one.

For their part, the Argyle fanbase appears to wish Norris little ill in his probable departure. This may come as a surprise, especially since the Southampton clash also featured an updated version of ‘The Syvlan Ebanks-Blake Song’, the now-Wolves striker gleefully exhorted to "fuck off". This bitterness, however, is more to do with the way SEB left – forcing Argyle into a sale at below market value, and refusing even to countenance the idea of a new contract. Norris, it seems, has been more patient, but perhaps that patience is now wearing thin.

He has been a good servant to the Pilgrims since joining from Bolton in 2002, and is generally considered an absolute Argyle legend. As a player, his finishing and control have sometimes let him down, but his energy is unequalled in my years of watching Plymouth, and his commitment has, until recently, rarely been in doubt. Enthusiasm, ebullience, ingenuity – he might never be Premiership-quality in terms of technique, but he could play there on sheer force of personality.

Price-wise, though, Argyle would be fool to accept £1.8m. Norris is worth a fair bit more than that, and with a number of suitors, a bidding war could increase that price by at least 50%. There is also the added inconvenience of the clause which means Norris's former club, Bolton Wanderers, will receive half of any sell-on fee. If a new, promotion-challenging Sturrock team is to be reconstructed from the rubble of Holloway’s side (although of course Norris was Luggy’s signing) the greens will need to splash the cash.

Friday was a good start, with the capture of Steve McLean from Cardiff for a club-record £500,000 fee. The 25-year-old is fits the two most common criteria of a Sturrock signing; he’s Scottish, like the boss, and they worked together at a previous club, Sheffield Wednesday. It was at Hillsborough McLean enjoyed his most successful years thus far, before a short, injury-plagued spell in Wales this season. In addition to several previous problems, this is a minor worry, but McLean’s performance against the Saints was more encouraging. A thoughtful, elegant player, he showed some nice touches, but could have had a crack at goal a couple of times, and may need to build up his strength and match fitness. He will also take a few games to get used to the nuances of his team-mates’ styles and the manager’s tactics, but if he does there is no reason why he cannot prove to be even better than the man he has replaced in the number nine shirt – Ebanks-Blake.

The Southampton match itself fitted the unfortunately typical formula a great deal of home matches in the past eighteen months, including one just over a year ago against the same opponents, which ended in the same scoreline. Argyle start badly, concede early, and proceed to dominate proceedings from then on, with poor finishing meaning they are only able to score once, if at all. The visitors were poor, a shadow of their former Premiership-fixture selves. But Plymouth could not force the win.

On Saturday it was Rory Fallon who at least prevented a greatly unjust defeat, volleying in from Argyle’s most common source of ammunition – the superlative left foot of Peter Halmosi, who almost effortlessly produced a man-of-the-match performance.

Fallon has been much maligned since his arrival a year ago, without really having a sustained opportunity to prove himself. Against the Saints he was excellent, recalling the half-time draw guest, Mickey Evans, in winning so much in the air and proving a constant menace to the visiting defence. Incredibly, Uriah Rennie did not book the Kiwi despite a string of fouls, each knock further unsettling the Southampton centre-halves. A big-man-little-man partnership appears to be Luggy’s preferred attacking blueprint, and if so Fallon has a real chance of establishing himself alongside, probably, either McLean or Jermaine Easter.

Halmosi, meanwhile, remains the absolute jewel in Argyle’s crown. If Norris leaves, it will be a sad day – he is popular and a talented footballer. But if it is a choice between he and the infinitely more talented Hungarian, I have already made my decision. And so, you feel, has Paul Stapleton.

RICH PARTINGTON

Honours even in derby battle

It’s fair to say that the atmosphere at Home Park for Plymouth Argyle home matches has slowly disintegrated over the last few seasons. When the Greens stormed through the lower divisions from 2001-2004, blitzing all-comers on the way to two championships in three years, there were countless days when the Devonport End roof virtually struggled to withstand the force of noise from underneath. And, for the biggest games, the Zoo Corner of the Lyndhurst began to develop in a similar way, with hundreds on their feet, united in song, for long periods.

This is something which has slowly fallen away, and there are several reasons for this, aside from the obvious – Argyle, of course, haven’t experienced a promotion season in the intervening period. Success will always get the fans singing, and there were so many massively important ties at the time, with so much riding on them – who can forget Mansfield and Exeter at home in 2002, or Swindon and QPR in 2004? The nervous tension of these games and the large, fervent support was conducive to a raucous, intimidating atmosphere.

That was replicated a couple of times when Argyle first went up to the Championship – Leeds at home in particular – but the disappointments and defeats of a long, hard season, where Argyle struggled with the step up to the second tier, wore down the supporters. An average of 16,420 saw league matches at Home Park in 2004-05, the highest number since 1960-61. This should have been the springboard for a widening of the fanbase and increased success, but the incompetence of Bobby Williamson and conservative tactics of his successor Tony Pulis drove the crowds away.

Bristol City are currently in a similar position to where Argyle were three years ago. Flushed with the feel-good factor from promotion, the crowds are still high and roaring on their team. However, with the Robins having managed to hang on to their messiah, manager Gary Johnson, while the Pilgrims lost ours, Paul Sturrock, to Southampton. City have started their assault on the Championship impressively well, the winning momentum yet to catch up with them.

Saturday, of course, was where the two sides met, and as well as providing an opportunity to decide the strongest side in the Westcountry, it allowed an intriguing insight into the state of two broadly progressive clubs who, sooner or later, should be making real challenges for places in the Premiership.

This was the first Argyle game which came anything close to a derby since promotion to the Championship, and, with City having sold out the Barn Park End, they were obviously up for it too, despite their claims that this week’s home tie with Cardiff means more.

The police, at any rate, were not taking chances. Travelling down on the train with my Turnip companion Andy Davies, and clad in a green shirt and scarf, I was surrounded by a see of Bristolians from Temple Meads onwards. There was certainly a degree of comfort in having the boys in yellow blazers only a couple of yards away.

At Plymouth station the security was stepped up with City fans diverted away from everyone else. I very nearly got dragged with them, but thankfully several determined jabs at my scarf amid the din conveyed to the coppers that this might be unwise. On the way back, I was not able to find Andy until we had passed Bristol, with the City fans having been kept inside the ground for more than 20 minutes after the match, and the train coaches segregated to avoid conflicts.

The Britannia Inn, on the corner of the ground, held a calmer ambience, with red and green mixing happily, but this was obviously not the case inside Home Park. A small segregation area, and the apparent willingness of the stewards to allow the massed opposing ranks in the Zoo corner and away end to stand for the entire game, was conducive to a crackling atmosphere. Even Andy admitted, at the time, that Argyle outsang Bristol. And we had something approaching those days I was referring to; the first time since the Watford FA Cup quarter-final, last season, that Home Park had felt like a real football ground.

And there was the return of personalised songs. An Argyle team entering the field of play in 2003 would have been greeted by an individual chant for almost every player – from ‘Marino, woah-oah!’ (Marino Keith) to the famous Jason Bent Song (he ‘came from Canada to play for Ar-gy-le’, to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’, and was compared favourably to the also-dreadlocked Edgar Davids) – but as the folk heroes have been found out at higher levels, and the club have got bigger, the relationship between players and fans has become weaker and these songs have dwindled.

Also, these songs, often started as a joke by small groups of fans, are much harder to spread in the bigger crowds and designated seating of today.

But when Sylvan Ebanks-Blake was tugged down in the box by Louis Carey on 23 minutes and got up to smash home the resulting penalty, the former Manchester United trainee’s enthusiastic celebrations were greeted by the Lyndhurst roaring his name to the cheesy tune of KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘Give It Up’. Sylvan’s further exploits provoked repeat readings, and a classic was born.

Kristian Timar didn’t have the best of afternoons, slicing the ball horrifically over Romain Larrieu’s head for City’s second-half own-goal equaliser, but beforehand he had been treated to several hearty bellowings of his surname. And for Argyle’s man-of-the-match goalkeeper, ‘He’s French, he’s great, he’s David Friio’s mate’ made a welcome return.
I didn’t sit down all afternoon. And though the 1-1 result, while probably a fair reflection of the game, was mildly disappointing given Argyle’s winning position, the atmosphere was how it should be every week.

The problem of making this happen is a complex one which must be examined separately, but certainly the decision to reduce prices for the Hull City FA Cup game on January 5 is a step in the right direction.

As for the best team in the Westcountry…the league table suggests the Robins are on top, but this game was as tight as they come, and for 70 minutes the Pilgrims looked the likely winners. Four months til the rematch. I’m excited already.

RICH PARTINGTON