Wes Saunders: Former Torquay manager (Photography/Allsport)

Nomadic goalkeeper Glass had joined Carlisle on one of many loan spells around the country as the Cumbrians went into the final game of 1998/99 needing to win and hope that Scarborough didn't.

They won and Glass, up in attack, scored the vital goal from an injury-time scramble. Good finish, too, and - so everybody said - the most improbable act of escapology in the history of the Football League.

But there's another set of fans who will probably lay claim to that - and this year their club is again involved in the scrap to avoid dropping into the Conference.

Torquay climbed off the bottom of Division Three on Tuesday, beating Macclesfield 2-0 at Plainmoor to put two points between themselves and relegation.

The man who has taken on the challenge of saving them is ex-Wolves boss Colin Lee, who stepped into the breach after manager Wes Saunders was fired last month.

Affable Saunders had taken the Gulls to the brink of the play-offs last season, but seemed powerless to stop the rot as this season imploded from the start.

Long after the crowd had left Withdean having seen a Bobby Zamora-inspired Brighton slam six past his side in September, Saunders was trying to put his finger on what had gone so spectacularly wrong in the space of just a few months.

He said something along the lines of "the players have got to go out and do it" - but the fact they often haven't means the prospect of another desperately tense last-day scrap for survival is still very much on the cards.

It couldn't - just couldn't - be any more desperate and tense than the events of May 1987, when Crewe came to town with Torquay needing a point to have any chance of staying afloat at Lincoln City's expense.

That didn't look probable. Time was running out fast, and Crewe had a 2-1 lead. Salvation didn't seem likely to come from anywhere: but in the end it arrived in the shape of a police dog called Bryn.

Bryn was guarding the ground's Popular Side and suddenly took exception to Gulls defender Jim McNichol, biting the Scotsman on the thigh.

As doctors tended to the player, the referee kept an eye on his watch and racked up the injury time. The dog bite had given Torquay a little over four extra minutes in which to fight for a point.

Scene of the drama (TonyO'Brien/Allsport)

That made Bryn the toast of Torquay, because it enabled one of the best players of a wretched, miserable season to become the saviour.

Just about the only thing that had given the Gulls a prayer going into the final day was a 16-goal haul by Paul Dobson. Seconds from the end of the extra, extra injury time, he made it 17 following a defensive blunder.

Torquay were staying up, dooming Lincoln - who had already finished playing by the time the crucial goal went in - on goal difference.

Nobody could really fathom out what had happened, or how it had happened. Dazed manager Stuart Morgan, who had faced injury crises with cool dignity and been able to spend virtually nothing, seemed barely able to figure it out.

Neither did the fans who poured onto the pitch at the end, chairing the players off the field in ecstatic triumph and dancing for joy.

And the day after, McNichol was introduced to Bryn as the media's cameras clicked. This time, their meeting was much more uneventful.

It's hard to believe the Devon club could ever run things that close again, but Carlisle, Lincoln (again), Barnet and current relegation spot occupiers Halifax Town are all around them in the equation.

Anything could happen: Alan Buckley's arrival has given Lincoln impetus, Carlisle, a club battered by the traumas of their recent past, are still hanging on for dear life, while Paul Bracewell is fighting to keep League football at the newly-rebuilt Shay.

As for Barnet: well, their Tony Cottee experiment didn't really work and they could find it very difficult to arrest what is becoming a headlong plunge towards 92nd spot.