It’s super Mark Halstead in goal…….
Is it? Well maybe? Could be?
You just never knew.
Mark’s time at Torquay was very much for me Katy Perry……. Hot & Cold!
And I think the first person that would say that would be Mark himself.
In all my years watching Torquay United and sport I can’t think of a more challenging and hard start to a career.
The start of Mark’s TUFC career he made Jean-Pierre Simb look like Jean-Pierre Papin, it was so bad I couldn’t see any way back for him.
I remember walking into Plainmoor chatting to the group of us going in and I was not talking on a footballing level but a human level, I genuinely was concerned for his welfare as mentally it would have been extremely challenging.
Football fans can be fickle at times and I think it’s important for people to step back reflect and take stock, and above all to remember these are human beings with feelings and emotions, what they have to go through it’s emotionally draining.
After a period of growth and dare I say confidence rebuilding, the departure of others meant the time had come for Mark to have the number 1 jersey.
And this is where the rollercoaster ride began.
Firstly, I think it’s fair to say Mark was and would have been one of the more busier TUFC Goalkeepers to wear the jersey.
He was fortunate to have the likes of Dean Moxey, Nick Lawrence, Mark Ellis and lately Asa Hall in front of him, but for the majority of his career in The English Riviera the ball was coming towards him not away from him.
So why the Rollercoaster analogy, well it’s simple, it was filled with ups and downs.
There were some games that I was there and I thought, how has that gone in, and my thought process would be straight away
Could have Mark done better???
There were quite a few of those occasions.
However, I would rather talk and more focus on more the brilliance as there were some games where it was unreal.
The start of last season there were fans on social media saying POTY was wrapped in September as Mark’s performances were simply mind blowing.
There were games where he made 3,4,5 world class saves that were goal-scoring shots that had no right to save but he did.
TUFC fans stood on terraces in Essex, Hertfordshire and others in the away end (even though it’s not segregated) saying and I quote “If it wasn’t for Halstead we would be at least 4 down by now”. That was a weekly thing with the away fans.
As a Broncos fan, we had a famous defence which was named the No Fly Zone. Simply this meant don’t through the ball because your receiver want catch it because our defence is so good.
Mark Halstead on many occasions created a No Fly Zone as any shots in the air going into the top corner, weren’t going in, he would fly stick a hand out and that ball went out for a corner. I repeat on many occasions.
I’ve mentioned this before and I have to repeat this again, Aveley Away. The volume and quality of saves that Mark made in that game were so many and so incredible it prompted the Aveley goalkeeper to turn to the Yellow Army half way through the second half and say “Who is this guy?”.
I wanted to shout back “He’s Batman”. I didn’t as I am in my 40s now and you just can’t be doing that, ha ha!
We lost 2-1, it should have been 7-0
Alan, Jonny, Tom, Jules and my son George just all stood there in the heat saying “Thank god we had Halstead today as that would have been embarrassing, he was unbelievable”.
And for me that’s where I think I would like to leave it, on a high.
For me it’s credit to the man not the player, coming back from that start to produce some of those performances shows an incredible character and Mark should hold his head high for that!
Let’s not forget also folks he got absolutely clattered at Hampton AND Richmond (got clattered against two teams) to the extent the games was delayed for ages and when Mark final got up and he was ok, I felt groggy just seeing him, Christ knows how he felt!
So even coming back from that just shows the man he is.
Thank you for everything Mark and we all wish you the best for the future.
Taking nothing away from Dean Moxey as I voted for him to be POTY but if Mark’s performances at the beginning of the season started in the later months of the season, he would have run away with it. Or it would have been very close!!
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