As a fan of a side that he never had a team in the top flight Alec Henderson has had to endure what he calls ‘some pretty grim times’. But the Pilgrims fan can say that he saw one of the greatest exponents of goal-poaching to never play in the top division, Tommy Tynan, a player whom for many Plymouth supporters will always be the Fans Favourite.

We got him from Newport when he was playing in the same team as John Aldridge, we brought him down here in about 1984 and went on to knock in a lot of goals for us. We actually tried to sign John Aldridge as well but the board decided that we could only have one, we went for Tommy Tynan and we all know what happened to John Aldridge. If we had had the both of them who knows what would have happened, one season Tynan scored 31 goals and another he had a tally that went into the late 20s. Even today you still get remarks on the terraces along the lines of ‘Tynan wouldn’t have missed that’, he is a living legend.

Tommy and John Aldridge shared the golden boot one season and Tyan was also in the team that got us to our furthest everpoint in the FA Cup in 1984 when we lost to Watford in the semi-final. Tommy Tynan is a very big part of the history of the club. That semi-final was the highlight, the only highlight! The rest of the time you needed a strong prescription because it really was grim, we were down to crowds of 5,000 but that one season alone we will live on it forever. The chances of us going up into the top division, I wouldn’t say they are negligible, but I think we have found our level in the league now and we accept that if we can maintain a good Championship position then that is as much as we can really accept.

After that semi-final, Graham Taylor actually said that he was glad that it didn’t go to extra-time because he thought they would have lost. With about 10 minutes to go, Kevin Hodges, who later went on to become our manager, hit a shot that went past Steve Sherwood, it was going in, but it was something like a Shane Warne ball and it spun and went around the other side of the post and it was at that point that we thought no Wembley for us!

Tynan moved to Rotherham because his wife wanted to move back to Yorkshire, Norman Hunter signed him but there were rumours of a punch-up on the training ground and he came back to Plymouth on loan with the proviso that he didn’t play when the two sides met a few weeks later. However, he did end up playing, and he scored! Things between us and Rotherham weren’t too happy for a while! But in modern day football I would have to say that Tommy Tynan is the best we have ever seen.