WERE you at Home Park this afternoon, you might well have experienced a strange sense of déjà vu, coupled with an acute poignancy.
The poignancy first, for this was the first match we had played since the death of probably the most famous non-playing Green of them all, Michael Foot, Rt. Hon. Pilgrim himself; the first match for which the much-loved former director (and, indeed, ex-squad member) had been unavailable for selection since 1921.
The flags on the Devonport were, aptly, at half-mast. As if to illustrate the ever-changing nature of life itself, I first saw the good ship Mayflower fluttering half-staff in the bright spring sunshine as I turned off Outland Road towards the Theatre of Greens.
Such a view had been impossible before in my lifetime as, previously, Home Park had been partially obscured by a rather pleasant avenue of trees that separated Pellow's Field and the Park & Ride car-park.
Those trees are no more. They have been lopped, chopped and dropped in the name of progress, i.e. the Life Centre. This was the first stage in that development.
The flora had to be taken out of the equation now as it is the law of the land that no tree in which a bird is nesting can be felled. Without this prescient action, the whole future of the leisure service industry in Plymouth could be setback months by the future vagaries of, for instance, a single broody chaffinch.
The trees might have gone, but the edifice on which they stood remains, and will remain for evermore. Well, for a long time, anyway.
You see, you can't just throw away a chunk of history like a Devon hedge willy-nilly: a quarter of them are more than 800 years old, which means the one outside Home Park could have been there since King John was marrying 13-year-old Isabella of Angoulême.
Devon hedges have a practical purpose, too. Around 600 flowering plants, 1,500 insects, 65 birds and 20 mammals have been recorded living or feeding in them. Presumably not all in the one outside Home Park, which, I am happy to say, is going to be lovingly relocated, stone by stone - a process which may well take longer than, and be significantly more complicated than, building the entire Life Centre.
As well as the half-mast gesture - the flags on the Devonport playing second fiddle to the invisible flag of death - Footy was well honoured at the game: a tribute in the programme, which was excruciatingly near being put to bed when news of Michael's death broke; some fond words from Paul Mariner; black armbands worn by the players in who he so believed his entire life; and a minute's applause pre kick-off, layered on a bedding of his favourite tune, Ella Fitzgerald's A Tisket, A Tasket.
They'll be many fellow members of the Green Army who have fond personal memories of Michael. I was privileged to know him slightly, and was, like most people who met him, totally captivated.
Even in his 90s, he had a vitality, a passion, an indefinable quality that only the French have come close to nailing with their je ne sais quoi. He was so frail when I first knew him, but only in body. His mind was as nimble as a kitten, and, when he opened his mouth to speak, what came out was aural platinum - I can only begin to imagine what he must have sounded like in the House of Commons in his pomp.
The déjà vu came as the teams emerged from the tunnel. The skippers of each side were carrying a Help for Heroes banner, behind which their team-mates strode to the pre-match hand-shake lines, the nature of which, seven days earlier, had been the focus of so much debate and speculation.
The Football League have adopted Help for Heroes as their charity and, in league with the Sun newspaper, decreed that this week should be Football for Heroes week (bet that went down a storm on Merseyside).
Blame us for being ahead of the game ('for once', you might say, and I would not put up much of an argument), but coming, as it did, in the home game immediately after our Armed Services Day, I cannot say that there was much appetite for, or point in having, a similarly themed event on successive match-days.
We did point this out to the Football League when they announced, hastily and without prior consultation with their member clubs, the date for Football for Heroes Week, but they did not show any interest in a surely valid point, or that our own plans for our second annual Armed Services Day were already well advanced.
You might have thought that they would have at least had a word or two with a club whose constituency comprises one of the few services cities in the Football League, and that had already staged a highly successful Armed Services Day the season before. You never know, we might have been able to help.
So Football for Heroes Week followed Armed Services Day, but I'll wager a pound to a peanut, that no ground this weekend hosted an Air Chief Vice-Marshall, an Admiral, Vice-Admiral and Rear-Admiral, and a Colonel in the British Army like Home Park did on Armed Services Day.
We're boasting because we're better.
Which, let's face it, is not something we've been able to say too often this strange and eventful season. Give it time, though, and we will get there.
Time, however, is something now in reasonably short supply: in less than two months, the beach will be the Saturday afternoon destination of Pilgrim players and followers alike.
So, as we lined up against Preston North End, we knew we needed to be better than at least half the sides we play between now and then (or, at least, get better results) if we are to remain in the Championship.
Given that premise, the opening quarter was not reassuring viewing. North End's front end - Ian Mellor and Jon Parkin - were a hefty handful for an Argyle defence in which captain Carl Fletcher was playing centre-back in place of injured Réda Johnson
There was little hint of the tremendous second-half performance at Bramall lane a week earlier, and the pressure told with a goal from Irish centre-back Sean St Ledger, who had warmed up for the game by playing for his country against Brazil in midweek: Kaka one game, Jamie Mackie the next - just another week in the life of a Championship footballer.
After St Ledger (who, you feel, should really play for Derby or Doncaster) had gone within inches of a second, we decided to come to the party. This would have come as no surprise to Argyle watchers of late.
We have suffered a bit from Second-half Syndrome for most of the season, but the symptoms have appeared to have become decidedly more acute lately. We seem to be on the back foot for the opening half-hour of matches, then, suddenly, we go from egg-beaters to world-beaters.
A goal behind and outplayed, we turned the momentum of game on its head, and were unlucky not to go into the break on level terms when Mase the Ace forced a brilliant save from Preston goalkeeper Andy Lonergan with a sharp header from Chris Clark's cross.
With Noone and Fallon on in the second half, there was no pendulum swing back to Preston: captain Carl and Mase both had decent early chances to level, and it was pressure, pressure, pressure from the now revving Green machine.
Still we needed a hero, maybe one with a piece of skill redolent of Footy's all-time favourite, Sammy Black.
Or maybe a 5ft 9in workhorse Irishman with ice in his blood.
Rick Cowdery
