Football / Fan's View
My first Rovers game in 3-and-a-half years
Having written a column about Bristol Rovers in this organ since the start of this season, it was only right that I would actually watch a game at the Memorial Stadium and last Tuesday, I finally managed it.
My loyal reader will be aware that I have not been to a single Rovers game for three and a half years, having decided not to attend games after chairman Nick Higgs decided to ban former director Kevin Spencer for having an opinion which was not the same as his own.
In a simple act of commonsense, one of the first moves the new board made was to unban Kevin, so back I came.
Very little had changed at the Memorial Stadium. The faces looked much the same, the toilets were a disgrace and the bars were still tatty. However, one thing had improved markedly: the football.
I could not have chosen better, or rather worse, opponents for my comeback game because Hartlepool were as woeful as Rovers were good. Hartlepool played like the players wanted to be somewhere else, which was not Hartlepool, and Rovers played like a team that was full of hunger and desire.
The 4-1 margin of victory flattered the visitors. I am not going down the road of ‘you can only beat what’s in front of you’ because that would be unfair on the Gas. Striker Matty Taylor would have terrified any team in the division with his movement and positional sense, not to mention his excellent finishing.
Rovers were better tactically, they were far fitter and they were to a man better players than Hartlepool. When I was last there, Paul Buckle’s ruinous management was already disintegrating in front of our very eyes and it reminded me that Mr Higgs had employed Buckle against the advice of Mr Spencer, yet another disagreement that might well have brought forward the banning order.
I cannot get over the level of professionalism at the club these days. Barely two weeks ago, Bristol Rovers was still being run on the basis of ‘luck and chemistry’, hoping that something would turn up, and now new club officials are being unveiled on the website, all switched on and clear in what they are there for.
No more turgid ‘chairman’s reports’ on the website and no more woolly statements from the board about how ‘things are progressing behind the scenes’ when it was blindingly obvious they weren’t.
These are still early days – or should that be early doors? – for the Al-Qadis at Bristol Rovers. We are promised evolution, not revolution, and I back that 100% per cent.
Will I be back again? To quote failed US presidential candidate and current Donald Trump supporter Sarah Palin, ‘You betcha!’
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