RUSSELL GRANT
Getting involved in a new volunteer or fundraising project will be rewarding. Being in at the beginning makes it all the more exciting. You will enjoy finding creative ways to stimulate others. A job or task is coming to an end and this will give you the freedom to start on something new.
LIBRA Sept 24–Oct 23
A strong urge to be creative is too strong to ignore. You won’t hesitate to grasp any opportunity to indulge in something you always enjoy. Even baking a cake or experimenting with new recipes will be more preferable to routine chores. Put work aside and make some time to create.
TORQUAY United manager Gary Johnson hailed his ‘heroic’ players after Tuesday night’s hard-fought 2-1 win at Solihull Moors.
“We defended like Trojans,” he said, after the league-leading Gulls had held the home side at bay in a frantic ‘hairy-scary’ final phase, which saw United keeper Shaun MacDonald sent off before Moors grabbed a goal deep in injury time.
“It was a good result,” said Johnson. “It was a heroic second half.”
Torquay took the lead in the first half when Asa Hall swept in his third penalty of the week. The Gulls skipper scored twice from the spot against Halifax last Saturday, and his spot-kick at Solihull was his seventh of the season. With 11 goals to his name in all competitions, midfielder Hall has taken over from Danny Wright as United’s leading scorer.
Billy Waters put Torquay 2-0 up in the second half, cutting in from the left and firing a shot into the corner of the Moors net after a magnificent pass from Connor LemonheighEvans.
And Torquay – with new signing Scott Boden named on the bench after joining on loan from Chesterfield – looked to be seeing out a relatively comfortable win until a flurry of cards and confusion in the seven minutes of added time.
In fact, the match stretched to 103 minutes as Solihull Moors used the conditions to their advantage, bombarding the Torquay penalty area with long balls, throws and crosses looking for the head of giant six-foot-nine-inch substitute target man Kyle Hudlin.
MacDonald was first booked for time-wasting as United tried to manage the last few minutes, then booked a second time after charging out of his area and felling Hudlin in a collision which left both players shaken.
Substitute keeper James Hamon came on for Torquay to see out the closing minutes, but his first touch of the ball was to pick it out of the net as Alex Gudger scored for the home side, converting the latest in a series of long throws hurled in on the wind by Ben Usher-Shipway for the Moors.
But Torquay survived the late siege and hung on for their second league win of 2021.
After the match Johnson paid tribute to his players.
He said: “Obviously we’ve still got a lot of lads at the minute who are playing because we’ve got to play them, and they’re not 100% fit, so it was a heroic performance really.
“At the end, we had three of four players on the pitch that wouldn’t normally play 97 minutes, but we had to keep them on.
“It was a heroic second half I thought, because we knew we were too open in our last few games, so we wanted to have a good shape, and make sure that we nicked the ball off them and broke on them.
“I thought we did that really well for the first two goals, and then obviously the shenanigans started happening, the goalie gets sent off , they score a goal and it gets a bit hairyscary.”
The Torquay manager said he was pleased by the way his defenders, missing the injured Kyle Cameron, handled the aerial threat posed by half-time substitute Hudlin.
“We defended very, very well, including against the 6ft 9in biggest striker in the world,” he said.
“He is the biggest striker in English football, and he’s going to cause you few problems, but I thought we dealt with that as best we could, and then the referee changed the game with the sending off of our goalie – we didn’t even know he’d got booked previously, and he didn’t know.
“Anyway we saw it out, and it’s that sort of win that sets you off again – even though they put us under pressure, we dealt with it.
“We were a bit weak with our defending on Saturday, but we defended like Trojans today, and I’m proud of them.”
Torquay have a break from league action next weekend, travelling to Woking on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the FA Trophy.