How a dream can end so quickly

On Monday I had the privilege of being at Plainmoor to see Torquay United take on Exeter City in the second leg of the play off semi final. Torquay, 2-1 up from the first leg took the lead just after the hour through Kevin Hill. Surely they couldn't throw away a 3-1 aggregate lead with just twenty minutes remaining? Wrong in a twenty minutes blitz Exeter scored 4 goals to knock out the southcoast rivals.

Watching the game unfold in the second half was just amazing, I've ever seen a team turn a game on it's head like that for a long time, especially after Exeter's poor performance for most of the game. But at the end of the day when it came to it they had the fire power to get themselves through.

Torquay will need to look at themselves hard in the mirror and work out where it all went wrong. not having Lee Phillips from the start certainly didn't help. I felt that Chris Zebroski's role up front didn't work and although he worked hard for the team he didn't look like frontman and he didn't hold the ball with any sort of authority. it was a bad call from both the manager and the player. Zebrokski should have been chosen on the left wing, where he is normally played in the first team. Another issue I have with the team was the substitution changes. Once Torquay took the lead through Hill, the fans, the team and more importantly the manager thought the tie was won. Paul Buckel has a lot to answer for here. he showed inexperience by making the changes he did and changed the dynamics of the team, when it didn't need to be tampered with. After all exeter had shown nothing up till this point.

While taking this into account I'm taking nothing away from Exeter. They were brilliant. A magnificent attacking performance, something you would find more in common with a team higher up the Football League ladder.Just a quick note about the Exeter away fans, they were magnificent some of the best I've seen since i've been watching football. Good luck to them in the final where they face Cambridge United at Wembley.