Plymouth wears a label it could do without and it is all Argyle’s fault. Football, as everyone is led by its hype to believe, is the most important thing in the world. And since Hull got into the Premier League in 2008 Plymouth is the largest city in England never to have played the game in the top flight. Happily they play the game in top spirit and, with Oxford United of like mind, Home Park hosted a fourth-tier 2-2 draw to gladden the heart at the end of another week in which the game’s governance and responsibility had been called into public question.
It took two referees to keep up but neither had need of cards. James Adcock retired at half-time, not threatened with stabbing by a parent but lame. The fourth official, Devon’s own Andrew Quin, took over without Oxford concern.
The clubs lie second and third in League Two and Plymouth can do them both a favour on Saturday when they go to Accrington, who are eight points behind in fourth but with two games in hand. Before then Portsmouth, Bristol Rovers and Wimbledon, the other three in the play-off positions and with only one game in hand, plus Accrington play on Tuesday in two matches that will clarify just how comfortable Plymouth and Oxford can feel.
For the moment the Pilgrims are more comfortable with themselves than they have been at any point since Hull passed them the buck. That season they too finished in the top half of the Championship, the tier where they have spent most of their time. Four seasons later, after successive relegations – the second propelled by a points deduction for administration – they were fighting twice consecutively against falling into the Conference, whence Oxford were scrambling back. They were not the first to discover that parachutes need personal operation – the static line does not always work – and that Peter Ridsdale and Far Eastern promises are not the answer.
They had found their answer in the autumn of 2011 in James Brent, a Devon businessman, who has said: “I’m not a football person but I think I’m a competent chairman.” Essentially he appreciated the club’s importance in the community and the priority of football over grandstanding when things come to the pinch, which they had. Home Park had been earmarked for World Cup 2018 with associated development, though its prevailing state was not responsible for the bid’s failure. At present three stands are good with the main one waiting.
After a sequence of tried-and-tested managers and a climb from the depths to play-offs Brent may have struck gold in Derek Adams, who succeeded John Sheridan last summer. Adams, now 40 and a midfielder of over 100 games for both Motherwell and Ross County, took the latter into the Scottish Premiership for the first time in 2012. Brent described him as “passionate and with significant ambition” and said: “It feels as if it’s going to be more open and exciting. A well-run Championship club is where we should aspire to be.”
Open and exciting it was on Saturday, when Oxford came on an away run of five successive wins and Plymouth, beaten midweek at Barnet, had shown resilience after their seven previous defeats with six wins and a draw. But such are their resources that, with Jordan Forster and Ryan Brunt added to their injured list last week, they could name only six substitutes.
One of them, Craig Tanner, scored Plymouth’s second equaliser having started the second half in place of the centre-back Peter Hartley, who damaged a hip, though the outstanding left-back, Gary Sawyer, moved to the middle. Hartley had opened the scoring for Oxford with an unchallenged header into his own goal from a corner, reflecting perhaps the programme’s quirk of Adams’ welcome notes inside the back page, as if an afterthought.
The other centre-back, Curtis Nelson, equalised in kind on the quarter-hour but before the interval Kemar Roofe blasted in his 13th league goal after Kelvin Mellor lost the ball to Jordan Bowery. A minute before Tanner’s goal Danny Hylton, later to graze the bar from 12 yards, dallied in a one-on-one with Luke McCormick and let Nelson rob him.
Michael Appleton, Oxford’s manager, conceded the sloppiness at set plays but said, “We are not the type of side to hold on to leads,” meaning they will look to increase them. Adams was proud of his team’s spirit and felt the “game was played in the right manner by players that wanted to win it”. At present he is bending Plymouth’s yearning curve to his will. League One will be lucky if it gets either club or both.
