"We needed it, I needed it! And that’s what I wanted from the players today."

We needed it, I needed it! That was the reaction of Torquay United manager Jimmy Ball after the Gulls won 3-0 at Walton & Hersham on Saturday.

At a ‘Sports Hub’ ground with a plastic pitch that was a bit sticky, Torquay took a deserved lead through Matt Jay when he lobbed their goalkeeper in the first half, and Cody Cooke (a great header from a Dom Bernard cross) and Jacob Beaumont-Clark (a right-footed smash into the net) settled the matter without much of a fight from the home side.

Toby Savin did make a good save when it was 1-0 to stop an equaliser, but really this was an easy win for a team aiming to rise back to the National League South play-off places, against a team who will do well to stay in the division.

Torquay now have 10 days off and that will give the manager some time to work out what has been going wrong – the team is still 13th in the table – and what went right at Walton.

“I am pleased, obviously,” said Ball. “We needed it, I needed it! And that’s what I wanted from the players today. You have got to come here and you have got to move the ball fast on a slow plastic pitch. We have got to try and go into the lead, when we go in the lead we have done well this season.

“We go in the lead and then grow more confidence. I think we had a couple of chances. I was disappointed we only went one-nil up. I think it’s a foul on Matt Jay but we don’t get penalties. And then we needed to do something, we wanted to score in the first 20 minutes – and we did, or not long after that.

“In the second half we started OK, the first five, but because we didn’t create anything we got a bit edgy and got a bit open. We got a bit nervous, I think. Then you have just got to try and get them through it and encourage them.

“And then they grew and grew and the subs did great – and then the second goal is textbook. And the third goal is Jacob again – he doesn’t score tap-ins, he puts it where the spiders live. Unstoppable.”

Ball had already made four changes from the team that lost 1-0 at AFC Totton before also having to swap in Taylor Scarff for Oludare Olunfunwa after the defender was injured in the warm up. “I must have walked under some ladders and broken a few mirrors,” said Ball.

With Jake Wannell suspended now for four games, losing Olufunwa as well would be a blow. But Scarff had a good game and we may see Tyler Hill move into the centre of defence again, if Ball can’t find a loan signing in time for the away game at Hemel Hempstead Town on Tuesday, November 10.

“Scarff came in and was big and brave and did his job great,” said Ball. “The lads adapted. They are a good group and they are together. They just dealt with it. But we will have to see how serious that is.”

After holding his hands up for mistakes at Totton, Ball got this one right, which is just as well as the pressure was on at Walton and a defeat there might have left the board with a big decision to make. But it was much better and the Gulls looked much more like a team than a a bunch of worried individuals.

Ball said: “It’s horses for courses. You don’t run your sprinters over the fences. You play what you think is right in the conditions and circumstances.

And then tonight it’s a dribbler’s pitch, you can get on the ball and run with it, be exciting and cross the ball. So then you deploy the players, and that’s my job. Will I get it right all the time? No. But I’ll try and do my homework, I’ll have reasoning, and hopefully the players go and execute it.

“No-one deserved to come out of the team, it was just horses for courses, and what I think will cause the opposition the most problems and obviously it did.”