With the number of minutes they have gone without conceding in the Football League currently standing at 961 minutes and enjoying a perfect start to the 2010-11 Npower League Two campaign, life is pretty good for Torquay United at the moment.
It is a far cry from the club that Buckle inherited when he was first appointed as manager in 2007, which was shortly after the Gulls had been relegated from the Football League and had only three players under contract.
Whilst the squad that he has assembled is not the biggest in League Two, what it lacks in quantity in makes up for quality in a number of areas.
For example, for the club's first competitive reserve game against Swansea City on August 12th only the absence of Martin Gritton through injury prevented the Gulls from naming a team comprising entirely of senior pros.
The subs bench for their last home match against included Gritton, highly rated Northern Irish prospect Eunan O'Kane, defender Kieran Charnock and the vastly experienced Wayne Carlisle. These are players who could probably get a game at most sides in League Two, but currently find themselves on the fringes of the Torquay starting eleven.
This illustrates the current level of ambition at Torquay, as do two other recent happenings off the field at Plainmoor.
Firstly, Paul Buckle spent one day last week watching Manchester United train at the invitation of Sir Alex Ferguson.
On the day itself, Sir Alex was attending a funeral so Buckle was instead shown around by his assistant Mike Phelan and came away impressed by the attitude and professionalism of the club and the Red Devils players.
Secondly, during the same week Buckle has revealed that he turned down a bid from an unnamed League One club for his young central defender Mark Ellis who has been a cornerstone of the Gulls defence that has kept their impressive clean sheet record going since the end of last season.
Though Buckle is not under pressure to sell any of his prized assets, he may well find that he maybe required to turn away more interested suitors if they continue their impressive start to the season.
