Skip to main content

Supporting Rovers is not a gas!

The Athletic has been looking at the hardest clubs in England to support.   Bristol Rovers were selected due to their 2025, which featured relegation as well as a record 10 consecutive defeats.

The club have never been in the top flight in their 143 years, and the last time they were in the second tier was 1993. They have never won a major trophy or reached a semi-final. 

It was the first home game of 2026, a new start and all that. An old face, Steve Evans, is the new Rovers manager, appointed shortly before Christmas. Rovers’ anthem, Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene, gets an airing and there was some familiarity in the scoreline, too: Bristol Rovers 0-1 Colchester United.

It was Rovers’ 13th home league game this season: they have won three, scoring eight goals. Eight. In the second half of last season, there had also been 13 home matches. Rovers won five of those. Nicknamed ‘The Gas’ and the ‘Pirates’, it meant in 2025 ‘Gasheads’ made 25 trips to the stadium, saw eight wins and 15 defeats.

One of the worst days came on the last day of the 2013-14 season. Although Jay fans had witnessed Rovers lose their home at Eastville in 1986 and then relocate out of Bristol to Bath for a decade, an interviewed fan said  Rovers 0-1 Mansfield Town on May 3, 2014, is infamous.

“We hit the bar, had shots cleared off the line,” he says, before delivering the killer detail — “and they borrowed our kit. Their kitman up there was on holiday. So they wore our change kit, won 1-0, and relegated us.

“I knew loads of fans who stopped coming then. We lost a generation.”

I was quite surprised that no mention was made of the fact that Rovers are the second club in Bristol, although Bristol City have had their frustrations.  In Glasgow, Dundee, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield there is a rough equivalence between the clubs (and in a slightly different way in Edinburgh)..   Stoke and Port Vale is he nearest to the Bristol case

But for a large and vibrant city, Bristol punches below its weight in football.   Of course, it is an area with a strong rugby tradition and indeed Bristol City seeks to embrace that sport.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...
1 comment
Read more

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful.  Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy).  However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch.   Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...
Post a Comment
Read more