Bristol City fan spends 800 hours painting club’s most famous moments

A Bristol City fan from New Zealand has spent hundreds of hours drawing some of the club’s most famous moments from its foundation in 1894 right up until the present day.

Ryan Wallace, who lives in Auckland, started following the Robins in the 2016/17 season after being introduced to the club by a Bristolian ex-pat friend of his dad.

“Being from New Zealand it’s obviously quite a strange thing to be a Bristol City fan,” 21-year-old Ryan told Bristol24/7. “Whenever people ask me who I support, they are often quite confused as to why I support them, with many having never heard of them before.”

Since the global pandemic struck, Ryan has spent more than 800 hours painting some of the greatest moments from his adopted team’s history for the Bristol City Mishmash, which is now available to pre-order as a poster.

From Bristol City’s appearances at Wembley and the Millennium Stadium to the Ashton Gate Eight, and goal celebrations including Lee Johnson spinning around ballboy Jaden Neale after Korey Smith’s winner against Manchester United in 2017, there are dozens of moments that ardent Robins fans will recognise in the Where’s Wally-style print.

Ryan Wallace, who is about to start a graduate job as an accountant, with his Bristol City Mashmash – photo: Ryan Wallace

Ryan said: “The idea for this project came about in around March of last year. Here in New Zealand we had just gone into lockdown, and outside of my work at university, I had a lot of other free time that I didn’t really know what to do with.

“I had recently bought quite a cheap and small drawing table so decided to start playing around with that, and in doing so began to draw some of my favourite Bristol City memories.

“From there the project kind of exploded. I took inspiration from Alex Bennett’s Football Mishmash posters, who I am now working with on both some final touches as well as the distribution of the poster, and began developing a large crowd scene capturing and showcasing some of City’s most memorable moments, goals, figures and events.

“In doing so, I was able to go back and revisit both the iconic events from my time supporting the club, as well as take in and learn so much more about City’s history, and incorporate that into the poster as well which was quite a cool learning experience.

“It was ultimately the enjoyment of learning more about the club as well as the aspect of bringing these moments to life which was the driving factor behind me creating and continuing this project through to now!”

The Bristol City Mishmash features a Where’s Wally-style illustration – photo: Ryan Wallace

There are still things to this that Ryan is continuing to work on, “whether that be adding in fans flags that have been sent through to me on Twitter or stumbling across other moments I somehow managed to miss”.

He is also asking fans for more suggestions for moments or flags which he promises that he will try to include “to further cap off the poster”.

“When I initially set out towards creating this project I had no idea of just how long it would end up taking me! What I thought would be a reasonably short process that I would have done half-way through last year ended up morphing into something much larger and more time consuming.

“Incorporating time into my week to work on the project became more and more challenging as uni got busier, but it was certainly a great distraction when I did have some available free time, especially during the lockdown period when there wasn’t much else to do.

“When I started up the project, it aligned with the time that football for City had been cancelled due to Covid-19 and as such the Bristol City official Twitter page didn’t have too much to post about.

“Instead they started asking questions to fans like ‘what was your favourite moment?’ or ‘what was your favourite goal?’ and I was able to go through those comments from fans and draw inspiration from them, finding a plethora of suggestions for potential inclusions that I was able to research in more detail and incorporate into the poster.

“This served to be a great tool in aiding my search for moments to be included, and also greatly expanded my own knowledge of the history of the club!”

Ryan said that the most significant moment for him personally in the artwork is Joe Bryan’s goal against Manchester United in the Carabao Cup.

“Not only was it the first moment that I drew for the poster, but it is one of my favourite City goals, scored by my favourite player at the time, and is a moment I remember very fondly.

“As I live in New Zealand the time-zone differences often make it quite difficult to watch City play, often games will be at 4am or some other crazy hour. But the Carabao Cup quarter-final over here was at about 9am, so I would miss it as I was headed off to school and couldn’t watch the game!

“I recorded it on TV, and somehow successfully spent the whole day avoiding seeing the scoreline so I could watch it at home.

“I remember vividly watching the game immediately when I got home from school and jumping out of my seat seeing Bryan smash that ball past Romero and into the top corner, with Korey Smith later making the game even more memorable for all of us City fans!

“It was a truly special moment and is such a significant part of the mishmash for me.”

Living in New Zealand means that devoted fan Ryan has never seen City play live nor visited Ashton Gate, but he watches matches online when he can.

Ryan added: “Growing up I was never heavily invested in football like I am now, and didn’t really know who to support. I never really wanted to support one of the top six Premier League clubs so ultimately ended up following City and slowly became more and more attached to the club.

“In supporting City I have grown a massively greater passion for football. I’m constantly looking for updates or watching games, and have a much larger interest in the sport in general now which has been fantastic.

“For all us City fans now I am really hoping we can start to get some success going at the club and see if we can push towards being a Premier League club hopefully in the not too distant future!”
Some other info:

The Bristol City Mishmash poster is available to pre-order from www.roundheadillustration.com/product/bristol-city-mishmash-pre-order-for-march-15th-2021-2. Tweet any suggestions for Ryan to include to him at @rjwbcfc.

Main photo: Ryan Wallace

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