‘John-Joe O’Toole: still on my list’

I’m really trying very hard not to say the same things every week. There’s nothing worse, in any walk of life, than a broken record; someone who keeps banging the same drum. 

But this is especially annoying in football – from the cliche-ridden TV pundit, to the one-eyed terrace bore, screeching at lung-busting volume how every tackle on his team’s players is a foul.

Any time the ball his an opponent north of their ankle is cause for a shout of “handball”, and he’s got a conspiracy theory about men in grey suits meeting up at the League’s HQ to cook up some scheme to keep HIS team down.

There’s no other way on this earth that you can explain a football team having a bad year or a referee making an incorrect decision by mistake.

So, apologies in advance for repeating myself. But there are recurring themes threaded through our season: tactical tinkering, starting slowly, reverting back to 4-4-2, getting back into the game, and more often than not, getting something out of it.

Saturday was a fine example; 1-0 down at Fortress Sixfields, where no away side has taken 3 points from since David Bowie was still on this mortal coil, looking very much second best.

Then, Sir Darrell makes the required change of formation, and, hey presto, an equaliser. Then we’re ahead. And we end up winning it at the death, ending a run that lasted more than four times longer than Sam Allardyce’s England reign.

I don’t mind if the dubious goals panel (what a job that is by the way!) award Rory Gaffney the first goal or whether they put it down as a John-Joe O’Toole own goal. The big, quick-footed Irishman will take confidence from his performance either way, while his countryman with the abysmal haircut certainly owed us a favour after his missed sitter in THAT game at home to Mansfield two years back. 

I know, I should be over it, Rovers are stronger than ever, O’Toole wasn’t that bad for us, it wasn’t his fault we were terrible, etc. I know. But football fans don’t always think rationally. He’s on my list.

Every football fan has a mental list of players they’ll never, ever forgive for something or other. In the week before our club stared into the black hole of non-league football, Captain Hairband here decides to brag to a presumably hysterical interviewer about how he’s capable of playing in the Premier League. 

And then he misses a chance that even one of those wooden cutout footballers used in free kick practice could’ve put away. Just stand still, head the ball straight, hey presto. Relegation avoided.

Perhaps I should be perversely grateful, after all. If the Back to the Future films teach us anything it’s that even changing one event from the past can have devastating knock-on effects. 

Say we stayed up – would we be where we are now? Would the previous custodians of the club had rightly tightened their purse strings like they did post-relegation, or would the debts have continued racking up? Would Darrell have been given the time he was afforded to reshape the squad, or would the club have expected him to turn a bunch of failures into League Two promotion candidates straight away? 

You never can tell. Maybe relegation was the wake up call Bristol Rovers needed, on and off the field. But O’Toole is still on my list, the horrible git. 

Sorry, rant over. The other two goals were a bit of alright too weren’t they? Charlie Colkett, who got the winner, looks the full package – one who might, just might, buck the trend of recent English Chelsea youngsters and actually wear a 1st team shirt for the blues one day. Maybe, just, maybe, he’ll wear the Three Lions of England someday – he’s worn it at all levels up to Under-20.

Speaking of the near-constant embarrassment that is our dear old national side, international call-ups mean Rovers have a weekend off. I plan to spend it jabbing pins in my John-Joe O’Toole voodoo doll. Okay, it’s not a voodoo doll. It’s a scarecrow.