MacDonald delighted to end his season on a high
Goalkeeper goes from almost quitting football to being Torquay’s Player of the Season
TORQUAY United goalkeeper Shaun MacDonald almost quit professional football in August to become a Marine or join the fire service – but after Saturday’s brilliant win against Chesterfield he was named Player of the Season.
The Geordie shot-stopper left Torquay at the end of last season because manager Gary Johnson couldn’t guarantee he would be first choice between the sticks – and he thought he had another club to go to.
But after the drama of the Torquay’s National League play-off defeat at Ashton Gate, in which Lucas Covolan scored a 90th-minute equaliser, MacDonald’s Brazilian team-mate followed him out of the club when he signed for Port Vale.
Johnson brought in Mark Halstead and Marcin Brzozowski, while Mac
Donald trained with Exeter City and then Dundee. But by the start of the new season he was without a club and decided he best look elsewhere for employment.
MacDonald said: “Obviously I left because I thought I had something that was pretty much sorted, but, to be honest, in August I applied for the Marines and the fire service.
“I thought I was going to try and do something longer term because I thought football was maybe coming to an end. The season had started and it was a bit tricky, so I was looking outside of football.”
It was an injury crisis that prompted Johnson to give MacDonald a call in September, and the 25-year-old arrived back at the club and hasn’t been out of the team since, with the fans voting him No 1 in the Player of the Season poll.
MacDonald said: “If you had said to me in August you will come back to Torquay and get Player of the Season and we will have finished the season like we have, I would have told you where to go, to be honest. But I have kept my head down and worked hard.”
MacDonald said he was surprised to win the fans’ vote adding: “To be fair, I was half expecting Armani Little to get it because he has had a fantastic season – over 30 goal involvements and he has stuck the penalty away (against Chesterfield).
“There are more lads that could have got it: Joe Lewis was unbelievable all season, Ben Wynter, Dean Moxey. There are seven or eight lads that have been fantastic all season.
“Thank you to the fans, first and foremost, and thank you to the lads as well. To have got to where we are now, in terms of where we were preChristmas, I think the lads have been unbelievable.
“That’s 13 clean sheets we have got for the season now. I think our home form has been very good, especially defensively. Against Chesterfield I haven’t had a save to make and that’s credit to the lads in front of me.”
The Gulls’ penultimate league game is against league leaders Stockport County tonight, after they lost against Wrexham on 3-0 on Sunday. That meant second-placed Wrexham drew level on points but with a game less to play – so Stockport will be desperate to go three points ahead in the race again.
They will have watched Torquay’s win on Saturday however – and will know Torquay won’t be in the mood to hand them the points on a plate.
In fact, the game is so important to Stockport and Wrexham that North Wales Police have felt it necessary to release a statement saying: “Wrexham fans planning to attend Stockport County’s next match will be denied entry to the ground.”