For Plymouth, england's southwestern port city, which recently experienced the "8/12 shooting", every step Argyle took this season was a great comfort to the sad hearts of the citizens.
In a round of the FA Cup this season, League One side Plymouth Arglye, who is worth only £5.28 million, visited Stamford Bridge and stirred up Chelsea chicken dogs who were worth a hundred times more than themselves. The two sides fought for 120 minutes, and Plymouth, who missed a penalty in the last minute, lost a goal.
Football, soothing the wounds of the city.
Text/ Tachibana Music
CFA CPA
01
Die-hard loyalists of the "fish belly"
Plymouth has an embarrassing record – England has never had the biggest city of a top-flight team. Argyle, the city's only professional club, nicknamed the "Pilgrims", sank to the lower division not because of unenterprising, but because of the lack of football traditions in the Southwest.
Unlike the seaside city with a pleasant climate and idyllic scenery, Plymouth, one of the three bases of the British Royal Navy, is known as the "Northern City of the South Coast" and is extremely dependent on heavy industry economically. In the 1970s, nearly one-fifth of Plymouth's 250,000 people worked at the Devon Harbor Dockyard. Over the next fifty years, the city went downhill with the decline of industry.
Located in the southwest corner of England, Plymouth is also not easily accessible by land and air, the airport was closed in 2011, and the nearest motorway, the M5, is also in Exeter, more than 70 kilometres away. This added a lot of difficulties to the team and the fans, and before the FA Cup match with the Blues, the pilgrim fans had to gather in the middle of the night to take a bus to London.
Plymouth is located in the southwest corner of England
It is such a "fish belly" team, but it has the most loyal fan base in the lower league. In league one of the best fans in league one, Plymouth fans are second only to the presence of veteran club Sunderland fans. With an average attendance of 12,000 people at home at Home Park this season, this is just a third-tier team in a city of 200,000 people.
Plymouth is most characteristic of the large away fan base. The economic downturn has led to a massive exodus of population, with Plymouthians scattered across the country becoming an important part of away fans. The FA Cup match against Chelsea involved 6,000 expedition fans, and the noise even overshadowed the home fans at one point.
Also one of the current presidents of the 2018 acquisition club, Simon Harrett, who has been a naturalized U.S. country for more than four decades, has had a successful investment banking career with an Oxford-educated Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) who has never forgotten the home team he supported as a child. When he got the chance to buy Plymouth, he asked his wife, who didn't know how to play, and the response was, "In my heart, you are already a shareholder in this team."
Plymouth's current chairman, Harrett
With Halette's capital injection, Plymouth was promoted back to League One immediately after a brief relegation to League Two in 19/20 and was successfully relegated last season.
02
8/12 shooting
The peaceful life of the Plymouth people was broken on August 12, 2021. A man named Jack Davidson shot five people in six minutes, wounded two, and then committed suicide with a bullet. This was the "8/12 Parklimouth shooting" that shocked the whole of Britain.
The five victims included the killer's biological mother and a father and daughter walking. The 43-year-old Lee Martin used his body to protect his 3-year-old daughter Sophie, but could not rewrite the tragedy of the duo's death, and the Everton and Plymouth fans never had the opportunity to travel with their uncle and cousin to the home team.
For a moment the whole of Plymouth was plunged into great grief, and the calm coastal city could not withstand such a cruel flying disaster. Citizens spontaneously gather in the park, holding candles in their hands to mourn the innocent victims, and the streets and alleys are full of people commemorating the deceased in their own way.
Citizens paint murals in memory of the victims
Two days later, Plymouth's first home game of the season, the Flag was lowered at half-mast for the first time, the club's social media accounts began a 36-hour silence, and the club's community trust was also actively involved in the rebuilding of the confidence of the residents of the Keyham community where the shooting occurred.
After internal discussions, the club decided to hold the match as scheduled, as there was no greater need than this time to cheer up the emotions of the citizens with a victory and lead the city out of the sadness.
On the day of the match, the players appeared in warm-up with "Plymouth Together" printed on them and five green careful training shirts, and a one-minute silence was held before the start of the match. The team's performance was blessed, facing Gillingham, who ranked 8th higher than himself last season, And no. 31 Luke Jeffcote pushed the deadlock with a beautiful arc in the 88th minute.
Pre-match silence ceremony on August 14
Who better suited to score that goal than a home-born 00-year-old academy player? The club tweeted after the match "Victory for Plymouth City."
03
Attacking pilgrims
Blessed by the Spirit of Heaven, Lee Martin has seen Plymouth break through in the opening stages of the season, losing just one of their 17 games, and at one point they were at the top of the table at 18th place last season and spent seven rounds in the direct promotion zone. Led by the team's excellent performance, the whole city gradually forgot about the pain.
Unfortunately, fairy tales are not often found. With the poaching of manager Ryan Lowe by Championship side Preston in December, the team's record slipped, losing six of its 11 games and slipping to 8th. However, in early January, they beat Championship side Birmingham in the third round of the FA Cup and won the opportunity to challenge Chelsea to have a stunning performance.
Living in this small town, every player had at least a relationship with one of the victims of the 8/12 shooting, and they wanted to do something for the city, and they did.
Captain Edwards celebrated the victory with the fans
As a small city's football faith, Plymouth has maintained a healthy operating condition during the epidemic. Harrett immediately injected £3.5 million, and 97% of season ticket holders gave up on refunds, allowing the team to survive the difficult years of empty stadiums. When it was not yet determined whether fans would be able to enter the stadium at the beginning of the season, the club sold 5,000 season tickets.
The team also received a £1.2 million pandemic subsidy from the Premier League and successfully claimed 2.5 million from the insurance company for business interruption insurance, which was saved in the 20/21 season to avoid losses.
Harlett also plans to invest in the renovation of the training base in the future to accommodate the first team, women's football team and youth academy. In his opinion, nothing can sustain the pulse of a club more than youth training, and it is not forgetting to taunt League Two rivals Exeter City and force them to sell Ampadu (Chelsea) and Watkins (Aston Villa) to fund the operation of the club as a negative case.
Exeter City and Plymouth's Devonshire Derby
The love of the owner, the support of the fans, the perfect professional league ecology and the professional operation make a low-level club in England live with dignity.
In fact, similar warm stories are not uncommon in England, where football traditions are deep, with 92 professional clubs and 92 community story collections (not counting the remaining 20 semi-professional and amateur league clubs), and the fish and water between football and fans has accumulated over the past century, forming a unique cultural phenomenon.
What we can learn from thousands of miles away is that football brings people a lot, far more than the thrill of winning. Football has nothing to do with life and death, but in a certain moment, the meaning of football transcends life and death, and it spurs the living to take the wishes of the deceased and continue to move forward towards a better life.
Football is life.
Source:
How Argyle has helped Plymouth in its darkest hour
(https://theathletic.com/3111906/2022/02/04/how-argyle-has-helped-plymouth-in-its-darkest-hour/)
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