Off Topic From a Birmingham fan - A good read on us!

A brum fan have made a blog about us gasheads. What do you think about is?


Their away following on Saturday was bigger than the away followings in nearly half the Premier League games, six of the npower Championship games, all but one of the games in League One and all of the games in League Two last weekend. Fans were locked outside because the Kingfield Stadium couldn’t cope with demand, and in a throwback to a bygone era those unfortunate enough not to gain access peered through stadium gates and climbed nearby trees to catch a glimpse of their team having travelled miles from their home city.

So where is the Kingfield Stadium? It’s in the footballing hotbed that is Woking. This rather ordinary non-league ground isn’t exactly where you would associate near enough 2,000 away fans turning up save for an exceptional cup tie they may be lucky enough to find themselves drawn in. But their opponents last Saturday are no ordinary non-league club. Bristol Rovers are still finding their feet after their unceremonious fall into the non-league in May 2014, but will be hoping to find their feet only to climb back up into the League as quickly as possible. They should be then looking climb out of League Two as quickly as possible as well; Bristol Rovers have as much potential, if not more, than Hull, Swansea and Cardiff all once had. To realise it they need to be aiming higher than being amongst the bottom rung of the ninety-two clubs.

Saturday shows that they are a club far too big for where they currently find themselves. As fantastic as it is to take that sort of following to Woking, that Woking were unable to cope with demand (God knows why the Woking staff didn’t just let Rovers fans who were stuck outside into one of the relatively empty home stands) shows that Rovers at that level are like a fish out of water.

But ultimately they are where they are not because of their fans, but because of how their players have underperformed in previous years and how carelessly they have been mismanaged. So how are they adapting to this new level of football? As well as could be expected on paper; second in the Conference, in catchable distance of league leaders Barnet. I’m not sure if it has been a particularly enjoyable experience a lot of the time, even though the team is winning a lot more games. When I asked my mate from Uni (a massive Gashead) whether he was enjoying the novelty of the non-league, he simply said “no, it’s s***”. You can his point; yes they have won a lot of games, but forty goals in thirty-one league games so far this season isn’t exactly the record of a free scoring side. Just five league wins (two of those against the league’s second bottom side) where they have won by more than the odd goal suggests a team scraping through in games rather than turning over their opposition. Add to that defeats against teams like Altrincham and Braintree and draws against Alfreton and Woking and you can see how Gas fans may have found the novelty of playing against these sorts of teams fade very quickly. The nadir probably never came in the league though – a 0-2 home loss against Bath City in the FA Trophy (a competition Gasheads will never want to see their side take part in again) must surely take the ‘prize’ of this season’s biggest humiliation.

Manager Darrell Clarke does deserve credit though; after a fairly bumpy start to the season (something that was almost inevitable after the shock of the drop last May) he has steadied the ship and made Rovers very solid and very hard to score against. Whilst they may not be particularly easy on the eye at times, if they aren’t conceding goals then they will continue to win games. Whether they can maintain this from now until the end of the season is like asking where a rainbow ends; no-one knows, but it is imperative that Rovers do get back up at the first attempt. Not just for their own pride, but because as history shows with the likes of Wrexham and Lincoln, established Football League clubs once upon a time – the longer you stay in the Conference it is harder to get out. Even Luton, probably the only club of a similar size to Rovers to ever have played in the non-league, took five years to get out of what is for these sorts of clubs a footballing abyss. Bristol Rovers shouldn’t be looking to spend any longer than they need to at this level of football.

Even if they do make it back up this season though, that’s the proper work has to start. As I said, Rovers have the same sort of potential as your Cardiffs, your Hulls and your Swanseas, but all three of them have come on leaps and bounds whilst Rovers have been left in footballing squalor. Rovers have been for years trying to build a new all-seater stadium in partnership with the University of Western England (UWE), to give themselves the sort of stadia those three aforementioned clubs now reside in, and it is imperative that they attain it – without the facilities, the infrastructure and most importantly the revenue stream a stadium like that can provide for the club, the club will be going nowhere fast.

It’s a process that has been long and drawn out, like any major construction project, but the Gas have had to overcome more obstacles than most. The first big obstacle was the local Green Party in Bristol; not exactly a traditional nemesis of football clubs, but their constant and often underhand tactics to stop the construction of the new stadium (with no mandate given to them by the people to do so) nearly brought the whole project to a premature end. They are effectively out of the way but now Sainsbury’s (who were set to buy the Memorial Stadium off Rovers) seem to be getting cold feet about the whole thing to the extent that Rovers are now threatening to take them to Court to force them to go through with their purchase of their ground; how a relatively provincial football club can compete with a huge supermarket chain with a lake of cash for lawyers I’m not sure, but it is imperative that Sainsbury’s do buy the ground. Without their money it is impossible to see how the UWE Stadium can ever be built, and without the new stadium it is impossible to see how Rovers can ever properly progress as a club.

(Continue's in next post as too big to fit in 1 post)

 

However even if this process does drag on for a while yet, it is imperative that the management of Rovers don’t take their eye off the ball in terms of what goes on on the pitch. I mentioned that the club had been carelessly managed for a prolonged period of time; to fall from mid-table in League One in 2010 to the Conference inside four years is nothing short of disastrous. But I don’t think the Rovers hierarchy are malicious or unscrupulous people, more that they were very careless and complacent. I think this complacency was shown with the way Darrell Clarke was appointed; he was John Ward’s assistant until the back end of last season, but was made manager as Ward was kicked upstairs to become Director of Football just as the Gas’ form started getting worse and at a point where they were only three points off the relegation places in League Two. The change was made at that point as part of what was always a long term plan to give Clarke the manager’s job, and Ward said it had been given to him at that point in the season so that he could start organising Rovers for the following season. That would have been sensible enough, but surely they should have only started preparation for the next season once they’d secured survival in the division? Surely it would have been better to wait until they were absolutely sure of League Two football before making that sort of change? Well they didn’t, and it’s just once of the many decisions taken over the previous few years which meant that Bristol Rovers managed to sleepwalk out of the institution that is the Football League.

Should they eventually manage to build this new stadium, there needs to be a long-term plan about rebuilding the football side of things at the club as well. At the start of this decade they looked to progressing well on the pitch, with a Director of Football and Manager (Lennie Lawrence and Paul Trollope respectively) who seemed to be building a team that had aspirations of reaching the Championship. Then Lawrence left, Trollope was sacked soon afterwards and as I said before Rovers started their rather rapid slide towards the Conference from thereon in. Managers came and went as attempt after attempt was made to halt the club’s side, but I think that was part of the problem – there was no sense of stability or any real attempt at long term planning. Wages remained relatively high for the level they were at, but there was no proper footballing leadership to guide the team forward. Even if Darrell Clarke is successful in guiding Rovers to promotion, I think they could do with a Lennie Lawrence sort of figure to liaise between the manager and the Board – the Chairman Nick Higgs clearly knows a lot more about construction as he ever will about football. Let him get on with securing the new stadium and let someone with knowledge of the game make decisions about the football team, because when Higgs and his fellow directors have made decisions about running the football side of the club in the past they have tended to be fairly disastrous.

All in all though, Saturday’s turnout at Woking shows what a big club Bristol Rovers could be – I always say that the true mark of a club’s fan base is the following it gets when it’s at a low ebb, and for them to get two thousand or so people following what is in effect the worst team in their history away from home is phenomenal. But Saturday was also a marker of just how far they have fallen and how they are far too big for the level they’re at. If they do manage to climb out of the non-league at the first attempt, they should look to kick on in the league above rather than aimless drift like before, because as they found once your drift the tide eventually takes you backwards. They need to have the aim that if and when they ever move into their new stadium they are looking towards climbing out of League Two and rise through the leagues like Cardiff, Swansea and Hull did before them and there is no reason why Rovers cannot emulate that sort of success story. Philosophers far more wistful than me have said that the darkest moment always precedes the dawn, and Rovers fans will be hoping that their season in the Conference is the one off watershed moment and the kick up the backside the club needed to reinvigorate itself and try and fulfil it’s potential.

https://nattubes.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/imagine-taking-nearly-2000-to-woking/

 

Well I enjoyed that read!

 

I agree it was a good read, however I disagree that it is the worst team in our history, he obviously did not watch our team last year when probably the highest paid players in the club could not be bothered to fight for the club/shirt/fans and got us relegated. After the last game last season the look of pain on the faces of people like Ollie Clarke Tom Lockyer and 1 or 2 others including our new manager showed who really cared

 

Good stuff

 

Nice journalism! Nice quote from his Gashead friend too!

 

A very good read and some very interesting points made - as a writer myself that gives me a bit of a run for my money. High standards needed for my next season review!

 

I'm sure your writing skills won't be eclipsed by a Brummie.

Was a good read but nothing I didn't already know or think tbh.

 

Like what gas said, im sure 'statto' wouldnt lose to a brummie

Yeah yeah yeah, of course you knew it all already

It is nice though that a fan from another club has this opinion of us and its not an opinion of our own fellow gasheads which people would say is biased!